date

21 Oct 1807 L d Eldon's Bill
21 Oct 1807

L d Eldon's Bill

Splitting sections, at least with the machine invented and employed by our legislator, is not, any more than splitting of logs, an operation unattended with labour: and the proof of it is that before the business is completed /Quorum is declared/, the force of the workman /operator/ fails him, and the promised Quorum remains undeclared.

Where lay the difficulty? Is it that the settlement of a Quorum was /is/ in its own nature too arduous an exploit /operation/ even for that noble and learned hand by which all other noble hands are led? If so, what other noble, what less-learned hand will attempt it. But no: - when a Quorum was to be settled for the whole Senate so easy was it /the operation/ found, that each time it was settled in a porch[?] it was a sort of thing that a man might settle as he ran /a mere parenthesis was sufficient for it/. When the business /task/ of settling a Quorum for a whole Senate runs off so /thus/ lightly, shall the exertions /efforts/ of our Hercules /Solon/ /Lycurgus/ be baffled by a mere half-senate? by the half of it the same Senate, which, till this inauspicious moment, had been so trustable?

Fortunately for Scotland, the quorum-creative force /strength/ of our /her/ Solon revives, like a Giant refreshed at the like section, and then and there where a Quorum for the adjustment of naterum possession is to be established, the Presiding Judge /the Presiding Judge wheresoever it may happen to him to sit, whether at the head of the division or elsewhere, may even though he be standing the whole time/, with any those of the other Judges of the Division, total number four, is pitched upon as constituting the sufficient number without difficulty.

But how much more fortunately, had the revival taken place a few sections earlier, and when the adjustment of Quorums was the order of the day!
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  • Title: [21 Oct r 1807 Eldon's Bill]
    Description: 21 Oct r 1807

    Eldon's Bill

    '.6.7 Quorums

    '.6 (1) ( Quorums) '.7 (1) (a Quorum thereof)

    Taken together, (and it would be indeed hard upon them indeed not to be taken together) these two sections may be termed Quorum Sections. The first of them is occupied in saying that each of the two divisions shall be a Quorum: the other in saying, or rather in endeavouring to say, and not being able to say, what /shall be/ that Quorum shall be.

    (On an occasion such as this a plain man /To a plain man it might /would/ would have been apt to come out) bluntly and without any preparation a plain man, meaning to have /make/ a Quorum number[?], would have come out bluntly with the declaration what that number was: and for this declaration one section would to his plain understanding have seemed sufficient. The refined genius of the learned Advisor would not stoop to any such coarse and vulgar practise. For a matter of such delicacy a smaller number of sections than two could not with any propriety have been made to serve. It required one, a sort of introductory section to prepare the mind of the reader for the other: to prepare him, and by giving him to understand that in some future undeclared section, which by due industry seconded by good fortune, it might happen /be his fortune/ to find out, the design would be accomplished, occupy and exercise his mind in conjectures what that /the so promised/ Quorum was destined to be.

    Of the sort /species/ of Members to which our legislator appears to belong an intimation was given at the outset of this commentary. To him who is one beside himeself a machine for splitting of hairs is a necessary implement: and the same machine may upon occasion, serve for splitting sections. Under such hands, a section like a polypus[?], is /becomes/ divisible in infinitum: convertible by fission into any given number of sections, each of them as perfect a section as the whole.
  • Title: [28 Oct r 1807 L d Eldon's Bill]
    Description: 28 Oct r 1807

    L d Eldon's Bill

    '.14

    The Presiding Judge

    (Minute without accuracy, censorial without ground, dissatisfied with every thing, competent to nothing, he frames and creates insufficiency where he found none.)

    (2) (The Presiding Judge, and the Judges of the Division)

    The skill displayed by this workman in planting obscurity and ambiguity upon the clearest ground is truly /altogether/ matchless. Here is yet a fourth point which he has contrived to render indeterminate dubious and unintelligible. When that paper which is to be presented by one knows not who, one knows not where is to be laid before somebody, who is that somebody? Solve this riddle who can. No Court, no Quorum, no Division now: but the Division itself is now divided into two unequal parts, the Presiding Judge one, and the Judges, one may /it may/ suppose the remainder of the Judges, the other: and to what purpose divided? that they may be united again as if for the purpose of raising a doubt /generating doubts/.

    Nor is this all. For who is the Presiding Judge? Is it the Lord President alone in Division the 1 st, the L d Justice Clerk alone, Vice-President, in Division the 2 d; or is it in each, on the absentation of the regularly presiding Judge whichsoever Judge by right of election presides in the division or acts at the head of it in his place. To what cause shall /can/ we ascribe this splitting and immediately consequent reunion? To the learned Draughtsman's habitual efflorescence /diversification/ /variegation/? Not for this time[?]: for immediately comes a separate /new/ Quorum, for this particular purpose only, with the Presiding Judge for one at all events in[?]

    , and then others any those as it may happen.
  • Title: [22 Oct r 1807 L d Eldon's Bill]
    Description: 22 Oct r 1807

    L d Eldon's Bill

    1. Legislation employed to enact /The [...?] taken in hand/, that a Judge presiding amongst other Judges shall have a voice: as if the judicial senate of /at/ Edinburgh were the House of Commons as if there were /among/ any thing in the nature of presiding that should deprive a man of his voice /render a man unfit for judicature/: as if in Westminster Hall, (for the noble and learned Lordships learned Advisor is no Scotchman) he had ever seen a Chief or other presiding Judge without a voice.

    2. More legislation employed to enact that a Judge performing the function of President shall not have had voices: as if a man could any more have two voices than two heads without a positive law /agreement or regulation/ to give them to him, a man could any more have two voices than two heads.

    Rewrite

    3. If indeed the intention were that of /for/ two Judges, presiding at the same time or at different times respectively in two divisions which is as much as to say in two different Courts there shall be but one voice /the Judge s presiding in each division shall in case of difference of opinion, have one voice/, making half a voice apiece - for this it must be confessed, legislation, were the arrangement a desirable one would not be unnecessary. The Protector[?] rivalries, it must be confessed, with the legislator for the glory of this invention: not that the wonder[?] would be great, if considering /that considering/ there were two divisions on the carpet at once with a Judge for each, it should have struck the legislator while the first line was penning, that whether the laws of justice or the law of arithmetic were to determine, he could not give the two divisions fewer than two presiding Judges: and that when /afterwards/, upon getting into the /[...?]/ second line he found himself got into a case, in which he was determined there should be but one voice, he had accordingly one and but one voice, there shall [...?] knowing how to get out of this difficulty, and trusting as usual to the powers /Goddess/ of Jurisprudence for the untying of the knot.