date

28 Oct r 1807 L d Eldon's Bill
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.
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  • Title: [29 Oct r 1807 L d Eldon's Bill]
    Description: 29 Oct r 1807

    L d Eldon's Bill

    '.14

    The Presiding Judge

    To collect what possible light may be to be thrown upon this darkness, we must resort once more to the Lord President's Bill. The draughtsman always knows what he is about: which is what the Lord Chancellor's scarce ever does.

    In the Lord President's Bill we shall indeed see symptoms of fissure and re-union, but that fissure /but the operation/ without an object is in the other case. Here as elsewhere whatsoever is /be to be/ done, nothing is to be done without the Lord President. If in the business of "regulating matters relative to interim possession, execution, and costs," it be agreable to the Lord President that any thing should be done, he attends, and it is done: if it be more agreable to him that nothing should be done, he forbears to attend, and nothing can be done. If "the Chamber in which from which the cause originally came" be the Chamber which has the Lord President for its presiding Judge /President/, so far so good /it is as well/, the Lord President has it that way: if it be the other Chamber, then it is to be laid not only before that Chamber, but in the first place before the Lord President - "before the Lord President, and the Chamber from which the cause originally came: and so the Lord President has it that way.

    In the Lord President's Bill the Lord Chancellor's draughtsman saw his groundwork and his instructions: but in /on/ this point as on so many others we see how he has floundered and blundered. In the hands of the Lord President's draughtsman the clause answered the Lord President's Draughtsman's purpose: in the hands of the Lord Chancellor's Draughtsman it answers no purpose at all. Instead of the Lord President and he /him/ alone, the Presiding Judge may be the Lord President or the Lord Justice Clerk, or any other Judge who by election "presides" "in the Division to which the case belongs," or "sits at the head of it."

    Here then, is the ambition of the Lord President's draughtsman defeated, and to all appearance by a blunder. But this being but one of his points, and to appearance one of the least important, leaving more loss than to gain by explanations, he leaves the matter to take its course.
  • Title: [21 Oct 1807 L d Eldon's Bill]
    Description: 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!
  • Title: [25 Oct r 1807 L d Eldon's Bill]
    Description: 25 Oct r 1807

    L d Eldon's Bill

    '.8.

    Senior Judge

    (│ │) (The Judge presiding in, or in his absence the senior Judge of, the other division)

    In '.2 when the phrase "shall sit at the head of each[?] division was under /among the/ consideration, inconveniences resulting from that rhetorical flourish put instead of shall preside, - its tendency to breed confusion and perplexity was observed. In the present section may be seen a proof. Had the word presiding been there employed, whatsoever were the divisions the absence of a Judge presiding in it was a case that could not here have been to be provided for, being a case that could never[?] happen. To the permanent President absence might happen: but if as often as it happened to the permanent President to be absent a temporary President was to be present, one of the other Judges taking on him /himself/ the character of presiding Judge: the case of the absence of a presiding Judge was a case which could never have place.

    Thus stands the case if to preside in a division and to sit at the head of it /one/ are precisely the same function. Give to the clause in '.2 that construction, there can never be a case in which the presiding Judge can be absent, never be a case in which in the words of '.8. the Senior Judge of the other Division can be to be called in.

    Give now to the clause of '.2. the other construction let presiding in the Division be one function, and sitting at the head of it another, in these terms and those above the clause in '.8 acquires a meaning. By the Judge presiding in the division is to be understood the permanent President, the President in titre, to whom it may happen to be absent /whose absence is one event capable of taking place/ without difficulty . He being absent, in[?] comes the clause in '.8. acquires a meaning and receives its execution and intended effect accordingly. The Senior Judge of this Division, obeys the call, and pays his visit to the other /gives to it from the other/: By /From/ this migration of the Senior Judge no interruption is given to the business of the Court that parts with him? Why no interruption? Because