date

29 Oct r 1807 L d Eldon's Bill
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.
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    assembled by President

    But between the printing of the two Bills, ambition had swelled in the lower /inferior/ regions, the spirit of liberality had taken possession of the upper: what you proposed for your Right Honourable principal, quoth the Lord Chancellor's learned draughtsman to the Lord President's, is a mere trifle: leave the matter to me, and see what care I take of you: every thing may be done with you, nothing at all shall ever be done without you. Thereupon he goes to work, and taking up the section as drawn by his learned co- and sub- operator re-enacts it in substance the first of the two parts which it consists of, with no other alteration than what consists in the stuffing in a quantity of surplusage, as usual from his own kitchen[?] to suit it to his own taste: Between forms and[?] of process he shifts presiding[?] and: taking out in both Chambers, he shifts in here before each of the said Divisions of the Judges respectively and before the Lords Ordinary of each respectively: then come [...?] verbis[?], and without any improvement made by superiority of station and learning, and no alteration thereof shall but by Acts of Sederunt of the whole Court: then immediately thereupon, after stuffing /interpolation/ in /of/ the favourable clause " in a quorum of nine Judges thereof, come the auspicious words copied with the most gracious fidelity, assembled by the Lord President. At the sound of these words as it were by a sudden fit of inspiration, such as genius is subject to, on he rushes giving to the Court or Quorum thus put under the power /guardianship //monarchy/ of the Lord President - the power to do everything that is to be done: "to which Court or Quorum," says he (as if by the bye) "it shall be competent to make such alterations in and regulations concerning such forms of proceeding and process, and particularly concerning the mode of conducting the Pleadings in the said Divisions or Court, and before the Ordinance, by writings or by pleadings caused on" (carried on?) " vivâ voce, as shall appear necessary or expedient ..."
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  • Title: [28 Oct r 1807 L d Eldon's Bill]
    Description: 28 Oct r 1807

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    '.14

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    (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/.

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    , and then others any those as it may happen.