date

7 Dec r 1807 Scotch Reform 9
7 Dec r 1807

Scotch Reform 9

4

Letter V

Ch.4. Litigation promoted

§.2. General Directions

Objects[?] of attention to Suits & Wrongs[?]

As your profit arises[?] out of suits, your attention will naturally be directed to the rendering them as necessary[?] as possible. But on the day justice or[?] then would be a work of labour, [...?] upon your case, another object [...?...?] will be to make the labour as light as possible.

1. In regard to litigation, or as some say suits, in your trade, as in that of a taylor a man's wish and study will naturally be, to make as many of them as possible: but in your trade the pursuit of this main object will require to be narrowed by particular limitations.

2. A suit being worth nothing to you but in respect to the profit that it brings, and if it brings no profit, worth less than nothing, being so much labour bestowed by you in waste, at the expence of your own case. So far as litigation is concerned, three points call at the same time for your attention: 1. of profit-yielding suits to make as many as you can, 2. from each such suit to make as much profit as you can, 3. to keep your hands as clear as you can of unprofitable ones.

3. In like manner, in regard to wrongs, your wish and study will as naturally be - that they may be in the greatest plenty as possible: and this not only because wrongs in general are the causes of suits, and almost only causes, because if there were no wrongs there would be no suits, but because in many cases and to a great extent, as you will see presently, it is only by means of a suit, that is with your assistance, that the wrong can be committed: and, while your profit is the same in both cases, whether the wrong be the cause or the effect of the suit is a question of metaphysics - an idle speculative question, altogether beneath your notice.
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  • Title: [7 Dec r 1807 Scotch Reform 11]
    Description: 7 Dec r 1807

    Scotch Reform 11

    6

    Letter V

    Litigation promoted

    §.2. General Directions

    5. Between the production of wrongs, and the production of suits the connection being thus intimate, and in a practical view inseparably connected, it will scarcely be worth your while to trouble yourself with the distinction. In regard to articles of this sort the course you have to take is the plain straight forward one: which is to give them whatsoever encouragement is in your power, with no other attention than that of giving the preference to the sort called civil ones. Multiplying wrongs, you increase the quantity of the seed: multiplying suits, so they be of the productive sort, you increase the harvest.

    6. Thus Your system of management has two main branches:

    1. the manufacture of wrongs and suits: 2. turning to the best account each suit so made.

    7. With a view to both branches, as being applicable to both branches, one general instruction may be of use to you: which is - never lose sight of the ends of justice. These ends cannot in the avoidance, prevention or cure of so many opposite and corresponding evils: and in particular the evils of factitious delay, vexation and expence in which latter your own profit is excluded. Between these evils so intimate is the connection, that there is scarce one of them that you can produce, without producing, if not a certainty, a chance not to be despised, of that which in the shape of profit comes into your pocket: so that in this case, without troubling your head with niceties, the plain and straight forward rule for you to pursue is - to lose no convenient opportunity of giving rise or increase to any of these evils.
  • Title: [PRIVATE 1807[?] Scotch Reform]
    Description: PRIVATE

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    Letter V

    II. Litigation: promoted

    8. This being promised, this being your golden and all-embracing rule, the main point, though comparatively more particular point that calls for your attention is - how to cause wrongs and suits to encrease and multiply.

    9. The stock out of which your profit is to be made, are the people at large, in the character of litigants: that is, considered in respect of their capacity of being brought into that profit-yielding shape.

    Considered in this point of view, they will be found distinguishable into diverse classes: of all which it will be of use to you to form a distinct conception, with a view to the encouragement to be given to them, which in different cases it will be of use to give, for the purpose of bringing them into your hands, as well as the mode of treatment which will enable you to make the most of them when there.
  • Title: [PRIVATE 4 July 1807 + B]
    Description: PRIVATE

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    2 o

    Letter V

    II. Litigat. promoted

    Your object is to encourage litigation: wrongs are of no use any further then as litigation is brought on, and kept up. To keep up litigation you must mind and be careful to keep down as much as possible every thing that can operate as a check to litigation: every sort of burthen or unpleasant obligation that in case of ill success in the suit it can happen to pass on the wrongdoer.

    What you have to aim at is that to as great an extent as possible, every man may derive, or what to you comes to the same thing, expect to derive, a neat profit from his own wrong. To the purpose:

    Momento the 1 o /Memoranda[?]/. Keep down satisfaction: keep down the value of it in magnitude as far as you can, and where in that line you can go no further, in point of certainty and proximity.

    Where the wrong for which the plaintiff demands satisfaction is it a wrong of commission? satisfaction if adequate consists in affording adequate reparation for the damage: is it a wrong of omission? satisfaction, if adequate, consists in doing that which ought to have been done, with reparation for the intermediate damage by the omission reckoning from the moment when the thing ought to have been done to the time when that or what is equivalent is done.

    To p. 9

    From p. 9

    In respect of magnitude untoward circumstances prevent your keeping it down in all cases so much as could be wished.

    1. So far indeed as concerns things movable it will be your fault if any man has any thing that he can call his own. What you give him will be not the thing itself, but whatever sum of money a company of 12 men who are in a hurry for their dinner and who never saw the thing, think fit to value it at.

    2. Extending this to things unmovable, would neither have been practicable nor perhaps eligible. As often as in this shape one man's property is wanted for the use of another, comes a separate law with its eventual set of suits; and the law itself makes fees.