JB_092_068.xml

Title: [7 Dec r 1807 Scotch Reform 12]

Description: 7 Dec r 1807

Scotch Reform 12

7

Lettr V

Ch.4. Litigation promoted

§.2. General Directions

8. The concern in which you are about to engage being a particular branch of manufacture, it is necessary you should be well acquainted with the most effectual and advantageous methods of providing yourself with stock.

Your stock may be divided into two principal parts 1. individuals at large, considered in the character of litigants, that is in respect of their respective capacities of being put into that profit-yielding shape: these are to you what the sheep are to a shepherd, the live part of your stock: 2. the instruments, by the help of which will be necessary to enable you to draw the matter of profit out of the live part of your stock: these will be to you what the shearing-irons or scissors are to the breeder and feeder of sheep.

9. In regard to individuals, who as soon as received into your pens, in quality of suitors, and as such set down in your books, compose the live part of your stock, you will in the first place, distribute them, in your mode of considering them, into three classes or divisions: 1. Bonâ fide suitors: 2. Malâ fide suitors on the defendant's side: 3. Malâ fide d o on the plaintiff's side. These distinctions you must be careful to observe: the mode of dealing with them being different in many respects according as they fall under one or other of these descriptions.

Your Malâ fide suitors on both sides will be further distinguished by you under the other subordinate divisions; corresponding to the differential characters which will be seen respectively to belong to them, and the corresponding differences in the processes requisite for the catching them and putting them to use.

JB_092_065.xml

Title: [7 Dec r 1807 Scotch Reform 9]

Description: 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.

JB_092_067.xml

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.