date

16 May 1808 I. Reasons Ch.V
16 May 1808

I. Reasons

Ch.V. Advantages

§.9./8./ Fiction ousted

 Here or under Language familiarized.

By the exclusion of these two master instruments of iniquity, nullification and fiction, together with their product, a language in which every imperfection of which language is susceptible - obscurity, ambiguity, and absurdity - have been nursed and matured with equal industry and success, an end would, in Scotland, be put to that degrading bondage, thraldom, in which men of all ranks, the very highest not excepted, are held bound, under a class of men acting under the influence of an interest opposite and irreconcilable to that of the whole nation besides.

See §. │ │ Language familiarized.
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  • Title: [16 May 1808 I. Reasons Ch.V]
    Description: 16 May 1808

    I. Reasons

    Ch.V. Advantages

    §.8./7./ Fiction ousted

    When the system of Scottish procedure began to develop itself, neither the need of any such instruments presented itself in any thing like equal degree, nor the facilities for using.

    1. Not the need of them. For being little embarassed by Parliaments, the Court of Session, the child and instrument of Royal power, found little difficulty in the pursuit of whatever happened to be its own views - that is, the views of the majority of that comparatively numerous judicatory, without recourse to fraud in either of those or in any other shapes.

    If a word was wanting, nobile officium served for everything.

    5./2./ Not the facility: for by this time, the Common mind had advanced to[?] [...?] too high a state of maturity to afford a prospect of success to frauds of so gross a texture. The dawn of religious liberty had begun to give its vigour to the public mind. No imposture too gross concealed from detection by the combined force of interest and interest-begotten prejudice. The Priests of the Grand Laws[?] proclaim the immortality of their ever changing God. English Lawyers proclaim the innocence and meritoriousness of iniquity under the name of nullification, and of lying under the name of fiction.

    6. The Roman Law &c

    7. In the case of the Scottish judicatory the populousness of that judicatory, and the parties into which it was in consequence habitually divided, were of themselves circumstances sufficient to throw obstruction in the way of any persevering and consistent system of fraud and artifice. Devised by one party, a law would have been denounced as such and protected against by another.
  • Title: [16 May 1808 I. Reasons Ch.V]
    Description: 16 May 1808

    I. Reasons

    Ch.V. Advantages

    §.9./8./ Fiction ousted.

    to worship vice and absurdity under the name of wisdom[?]

    To the public understanding again, by contributing its part in the composition of the matter of false science: by contributing its part towards rendering the rule of action unintelligible, and to cause man to acquiesce in its being so, to produce this acquiescence not only on the part of the uninformed and powerless multitude, but on the part even of the select few, to whose office it belongs to concurr in the formation of the laws the extension, correction and improvement of that rule of action which by this and other hundred artifices[?] thus has been rendered unintelligible even to themselves.

    To the public understanding again, by familiarizing it with absurdity: absurdity of the very grossest kind conceivable, such as if uttered by any man not protected from censure by irresistible power, would expose him to universal scorn, familiarizing men with it, and deluding them so far [as] engaging them to regard it not merely with indifference but with veneration, as part and parcel of the matter of arduous and peculiar science, whereas the science is nothing but what any man of the lowest vulgar[?] may equal and display at pleasure, who without making it the instrument of iniquity, will be satisfied with talking nonsense.
  • Title: [16 May 1808 1. Reasons Ch.V]
    Description: 16 May 1808

    1. Reasons

    Ch.V. Advantages

    §. Language familiarized

    This is matter of law: consequently it is no concern of mine...". The principle of the Bill I see, and understand: approving it, I give it my support: as to the technical language, in which it may be necessary that this or that clause in it shall be cloathed, this is no concern of mine - this is the concern of the gentlemen of the long robe, and to them of course I leave it.

    How common, not to say, how universal this declaration and profession! how degrading, were it less universal, the confession involved in it!

    Give unto me, [Read much], and learn the law! such was the exhortation given by the first of lecturers, himself afterwards one of the sages of the law. To any one (continues he) to any one who pretends to the name of gentleman how degrading not to have learnt it - not to understand it. The law he was speaking of was English law. The invitation might be given with perfect safety. Men might, in any numbers, have flocked to learn it - and without any danger that men designated by the name of gentlemen, by way in contradistinction to lawyers - that men, in a word, any men other than such as expected to be paid for professing to have learnt it, would submitt to so much as a small part of that drudgery without which, if even on these terms, no man could hope to understand it.