date

11 Oct r 1807 Lords Delegates
11 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

Ch. │ │ Hale's Objection

Had it lain within the reach of fraud and usurpation to establish a /an adequate/ system of taxation in pretence of judicature, the business would long ago have been effected, and by hands much better adapted to /qualified for/ the purpose, in point of sinister interest, and thence in point of astutia[?], than any that could ever be found at that time, and before the theatre of honour was deluged by upstart lawyers, be found in the House of Lords. In /During/ so many centuries /ages/ of supineness on the part of their superiors the Judges /Lawyer-Judges/ of Westminster Hall /and in possession of the undisturbed faculty of making whatsoever law it was possible to make in pretence of judicature/ neither[?] then had nor have since been able to make any greater advances in the plan /scheme/ of establishing a system of taxation for their own benefit any greater advances /progress/ than what has been made /consists/ by the taxes imposed on conveyances by and to the use of the Judges of the Common Pleas, and the taxes imposed on suitors by the Judges of all the Courts under the name of fees. +

For an example of what may be done indirectly in the way of legislation, by the exercise of judicial power, the field here chosen /taken/ by the learned Judge is the field of statutory law. In the field of jurisprudential law he might have found a soil much more fertile: and to shew the mischiefs /mischief/ that with the power of judicature in their hands might be done by all that was noble in the kingdom, he needed no more than /but/ to have brought to view the mischief actually done with the same instrument in their hands by a few vocal lawyers, seated on three or four benches.

Happily for his argument, the case of statutory law being /so/ by its simplicity and apprehensibility, so much better adapted to the purpose of illustration, saved him from the necessity of /so [...?] a necessity as that of/ presenting the eye of the reader to the seat of everlasting confusion and imposition.

+ Change the order of the sentence.
Similar Items
  • Title: [12 Oct r 1807 Lords Delegates]
    Description: 12 Oct r 1807

    Lords Delegates

    After Ch. ││ Hale's Plan

    Ch. ││ Hale's objections

    5. Towards the effecting /establishment/ of any such usurpation no considerable advance could be made by individual decisions; unaccompanied by any of those general propositions, of which the matter of law, whether in the form of statutory law or jurisprudential, real law or factitious, must be composed.

    Supposing /Yet,/ /But,/ the conquest projected, these individual decisions were all that the House of Lords could have to make it with. No general body of doctrine had never been, or, under the eye of the other House was at all likely to be, framed for their use, adapted to this their supposed intended purpose. The Lord had no institutional writers among them, no Reporters.

    The King, and his instruments the Judges, had their prerogative lawyers: for in those days what lawyer was there that was not a prerogative lawyer? Zealots for /idolaters of/ the prerogative, in fighting up with indefatigable zeal and industry, the two inseparable blessings, King's power, and Judges profit. A Lords-privilege lawyer was a sort of animal that had never been monster exemplified. In Prynne[?] indeed, the ever changing ever-voluminous, and ever violent Prynne[?] they had found indeed a hot defender of this power, so far as concerned right of possession, but not any instructor /instruction/ for this abuse, or for any use, of it.

    6. The Lords, a comparatively numerous and scattered, and, in respect of the distinction between Temporal and Spiritual, a naturally divided body, as well as in respect of hereditary dignity and opulence an indolent one - had no such necessary occasions and opportunities for apocuilation[?] and concert not to say cabal, as the 12 Judges. No common cant or slang, serving alike for a bond of fraternity, and an instrument of depredation. No common Inn to dine at: No common Hall, with a central fire in it to dance around. to hear and give lectures in: - to confer degrees: to concert measures in, against the common prey and the common enemy.
  • Title: [12 Oct r 1807 Lords Delegates]
    Description: 12 Oct r 1807

    Lords Delegates

    After Ch. ││ Hale's Plan

    Ch. ││ Hale's objections

    Under the mixt constitution of the British Isles this identity this compleat junction between the supreme legislative power and the supreme judicial, is not practicable. With difficulty the united /co-ordinate/ authorities find time for legislature: for judicature they could find none without abandonment of that duty which to judicature is in importance as infinity to one.

    The expedient which the three united authorities have found themselves reduced to by necessity; is the confiding to one of them /abandoning this charge/: that one is the House of Lords, [...?] the inconsistent and anomalous but happily not widely-extending exceptions formed by the Ecclesiastical Courts, the Admiralty Courts, and the Colonial Courts, to the House of Lords and to that authority alone belongs the charge and care of securing in the divisions on the part of the several judicatories an undeviating conformity to the will, declared and presumed, statutory and jurisprudential, of that supreme legislature, in which of itself it proposes but a third share.

     proceed to show the reasonableness of the expectation of fidelity on the part of the Lords then go on as per next page.
  • Title: [14 July 1805 Evidence Introd]
    Description: 14 July 1805

    Evidence

    Introd. Jurisprudent

    Ch. II. Vices

    But though the security from this quarter should be ever so much greater than upon an unprejudiced examination it would be found to be, it would be nothing /little/ to the purpose. For in regard to degrees of arbitrariness, the question is - not between English judicature and the judicature of other countries, the standard of obedience being in both instances in the state of jurisprudential, or in both in the state of statutory, law, but between English judicature under jurisprudential, and /the same/ English judicature under statutory law.