1 June 1807

Letter V

III. Proper Remedies

1. Solvent

In practice ordinary profit by delay, as above described, presents no difficulty: extraordinary may sometimes be difficult to search out and discover. But in each instance unless it be pursued and enquired out, the object of the knave, with Judge and C o his accomplices compassed - factitious delay (the system allowing of it) is produced - the engagements taken by the main body of the law in this behalf disfulfilled and violated - the ends of justice disfulfilled - the aim of the legislator - if he be honest and not in confederacy with Judge and C o, frustrated.

These same distinctions which thus we have seen applying to money or money's worth considered as coming in in the shape of profit, may be seen applying, and with equal truth and propriety to money or money's worth considered as going out, in that shape of loss.

And with a view to prevention of loss, in the shape of damage, with or without injury, on the one side these same distinctions are not more intitled to the legislator's regard than they are with a view to the adjustment of satisfaction for loss, to be made to the sufferer, at the charge of him who, with or without injury, is considered as the author, or on any other score held bound to the reparation of it.

{What renders the propriety, of applying these several distinctions in question to this side as well as to the opposite side, the more prominent and unquestionable, is - that where the malâ fides is not, as most usually it is, on the defendant's side, but on the plaintiff's - and the object of his wish his intention not to acquire gain to himself, but merely to impose loss on his adversary, the actuating motive being not rapacity, but enmity, profit and loss will then be in a manner confounded: the loss to the oppressed constituting the profit, and the whole of the profit, to the oppressor, and consequently running on throughout in exact proportion to it.
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    II. Proper Remedies

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    Hence one general line of policy on the part of Judge and C o in the spinning out of jurisprudential law, to keep down the quantity of satisfaction as for injury - to take care that in each instance it shall rather be deficient than, in the way above described, and with relation to their ends - the ends of judicature - excessive.

    On the side of deficiency, the danger to their purpose is less considerable. Without litigation, the injured party by the supposition will not get any thing, on the score of satisfaction or on any other score. Of him therefore Judge and C o are sure, so long as in his view whatsoever may be the truth of the case - less by expence of suit and vexation be not so heavy as to outweigh profit by satisfaction, vindictive as well as pecuniary included.
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    To conclude. In the way of money or money's worth whichever whether

    for themselves or for you or for themselves Your rulers great will be either /must be

    either/ without force, upon them or by and with and by force. If without force upon

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  • Title: [22 June 1807 (6) Letter V]
    Description: 22 June 1807

    (6)

    Letter V

    II. Litigation

    II. Def t malâ fide

    The bonâ fides of the defendant standing clear of suspicion, and the question, how far this or that article of profit made by him may have owed its existence to the money or money's worth wrongfully retained by him, being exposed to doubt, a case will now and then present itself in which it may be proper, consideration had of pecuniary circumstances on both sides, for the Judge to forbear exacting from the defendant the utmost possible amount of the consequential benefit of which the delay that has taken place is suspected or even ascertained to have been the cause.

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    To search out extra profit under its various modifications, non-commercial and commercial, ordinary and extraordinary, direct and consequential as above marked out - to drag it to light, and strip it of the various disguises under which it will so naturally seek to cloak itself, is a process that in some instances will be found to involve more or less of difficulty: but to the investigation of latent profit or loss no greater difficulties oppose themselves than what frequently oppose themselves (as per Letter 4 th) to the investigation of latent evidence: and cases will arise in which in both of these lines investigation is alike necessary to justice.

    By a chain of whatsoever length drawn up, and by whatsoever disguises masked, will profit, even in value, abate any thing of its influence in the hand or in the heart?