093-354.xml

Title: [23 Oct r 1807 L d Eldon's Bill]

Description: 23 Oct r 1807

L d Eldon's Bill

'.1.

Division vice Court

Various are the instruments that have been employed for making laws alteration-proof: such as here present themselves are reducible to three:- solemnity, oath, treaty.

1. It was by solemnity that the property of inalterability was conferred on Magna Charta. In the histories of the time and in the law books of other times may be seen the materials of which this /the/ instrument was composed, and the expence incurred in various articles for the making of it. Lungs exercised in making proclamation; souls consigned to eventual damnation by conditional [...?] and [...?]: candles burnt and expended in the making of the conveyance.

Whatsoever be the virtue of this instrument it can never be otherwise than comparative. How tight soever the knot which is tied by a hundred proclamations, a hundred an one will serve for the untying it /may be untied by a hundred and one/: if twenty bishops have been employed in turning the tide of damnation one way: one and twenty bishops, at least if in an average equally stocked with holiness, will have strength enough to turn it the contrary way, if twenty wax candles were consumed /destroyed/ in rendering the law indestructible, one and twenty candles if of equal weight and firmness will suffice for the destruction of it.

In the days of the French Revolution, at /on the occasion of/ the fixation of the Constitution, such was the maturity of the age, or such the modesty of the men, that though the body of regulation was to cover the whole field of constitutional law the duration of the inalterability was limited to twenty years. But if men /a people/ have gone on for twenty years living under a set of bad laws so may they for any number of years more. By custom men get /become/ reconciled to many an evil, which at the first stroke was scarce endurable. In legislation it is at the outset that the inconveniences attached /incident/ to novelty /experiment/ are most apt to shew themselves /take their rise/.

Generous legislators! having the fee-simple[?] of infallibility at their command, they gave themselves no more than a twenty year lease of it. On the occasion neither proclamations, nor damnation, nor candles were employed. The causes material and efficient of solemnity, vary with the age, not to mention other circumstances. But whatsoever they were that on that occasion were most suitable, it was not by any want of them that the result of the experiment were rendered so unfavourable.

JB_094_456.xml

Title: [28 Jan y 1808 II Appeals 1]

Description: 28 Jan y 1808

II Appeals

1. [...?] not possible[?]

4

Nulli[?] vendimus nulli[?] negatimus[?] aut differens[?] sit[?] possessione[?]

9 Hen. 3. c.29. A o 1225

Under the Scottish modification, in the supreme judicatory[?], till comparatively of late years every year was divided into two equal parts, Vacation time composing one. Here was 6 calendar months of factitious delay, exposed to sale in one lump. Since /In/ the Year 1 │ │ causes lying /a convention the cause of which lies/ too far out of the reach /way/ of ready scrutiny, broke this magnificent lump into two lumps of four and two months.

When in fixed masses of such enormous magnitude injustice is thus sold out without so much as the pretence /put upon sale not only without name but without pretence/ of a reason, occasional masses of different lengths are /were/ added to them without difficulty on any the most flimsy /flimsiest/ pretence. {The enormous /mountainous/ waste of war renders men not the more but the less jealous of all minor that is of all minor wastes.}

Never shall justice be denied, delayed or sold says the King of England in Magna Charta /the Great Charter of Henry the 3 d/. /In/ The [...?] of /law establishing/ the market overt for the sale of factitious delay is the Magna Charta of the supreme Scottish judicatory /the Guardians /Ministers/ of Scottish justice behold their Magna Charta/, a Charter granted by themselves, to themselves, with the dishonest[?] part of the population in perpetual succession[?] in quality of co-partners, a charter which to the utmost of their power they are /have expressed themselves/ determined to maintain inviolate. On a grand occasion, and for production of stage-effect, Fiat justitia, ruat cælum, was once the motto of L d Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of all England. Fiat injustitia, ruat turru[?], is the improvement now made upon it, by the official head of Scottish justice. Perish justice, (says that Right Honourable Judge, with ten out of his fourteen younger brethren) perish justice, now and for ever, rather than that we should lose a moment of our ease. +

+ Supra, p.

104_213.xml

Title: [25 June 1810 June 1 o or ult]

Description: 25 June 1810 June 1

o

or ult

Fallacies 1 Posterity chainers

Such laws could not be perpetual unless the state dies, ever perpetual: so is expected so to be? To sure it might not one of these laws be repealed?

L\T dT\ Cole was for making holding for void every Act contrary to Magna Charta: if so, every act would br void that imposed law[?] taxes

Perpetuity seeking Contracts and bouregousies[?] as reprobasted[?] by lawyers.

Of a law the aim of which were to tie up for every the hands of future legislators, a lawyer if any one there were whose purpose happened to be thwarted by it would say it were void.

From every man who to a grain of honesty adds a grain of discernment far for ever /on this occasion as on every other/ be such language.

can are

Applied to the acts of legislature means consisting in the use of such language are too bad to be applied to any the best end: nor in the present instance would the end b served by it.

When a Judge says such or such a law is void, what he means is I will not on my part do any thing towards the execution of it: my decisions my operations afar and notwithstanding the law will be such as they would have been had no such law been made.

But on /by/ the present occasion /case/, there is not room for the /any/ exercise of power by link[?] hands person whose operations are in question is not the Judge, but the Legislator: whether a law repugnant to the letter of any such perteutity seeking law