date

2 May 1807  After Juries or Justices
2 May 1807

 After Juries or Justices[?] to be inserted

[Insert Table]

Affirmed Reversed Remitted Withdrawn Dismissed

1st Period 58 25 4 46 28 38 88 152

2nd Perios 51 13 11 42 36 15 64 109

109 38 15 88 64 53 152 261

[End of Table]

E1 (4) (1)

Letter V

Ch.12. Appeal list mutilated

§.5. Execution - stoppage

injustice amount

In a former part of this letter I saw occasion to remark the inconsistency in not trusting to the highest local judicature in Scotland with the power of giving provisional effect to their judgment, notwithstanding Appeal, subject to the obligation of taking whatsoever arrangements might be necessary, according to the nature of the case from preserving such execution from the mishap of having become, in case of reversal, the instrument of irreparable damage.

Imperfect as they are, the documents already furnished as above, are sufficient to place in the strongest as well as clearest light, the relative amount as well as the existence of the mass of injustice of which this incongruity has been productive.

In the two periods, making together 14 years, judgments of the Court of Session, reversed on appeal or modified (viz. or remitted) 53: neither reversed nor modified, but the appeals either withdrawn or dismissed for want of being prosecuted, 261: within a trifle 5 to 1. But in every instance in which the judgment was in the Court above deemed so decidedly correct as neither to be reversed nor modified, so long as execution was stopped by the appeal, so long and as to so much was injustice done: 5 instances in which injustice was done by the stoppage, for every one in which it was saved: not that in this one injustice need have been done, or in the common course of things would have been done, had the powers necessary to the prevention of it been given as above.
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  • Title: [3 May 1807 Scotch Reform (5]
    Description: 3 May 1807

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    Letter V? VI

    Letter V

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    To discover /determine/ therefore what from the operation of the above principles [...?] be the degree of the reduction reasonably to be expected in the number of Appeals from the Court of Session to the House of Lords (and without the interposition of any Chamber of Review) let us compare the appeals withdrawn and dismissed taken together on the one hand, with the appeals affirmed, reversed and remitted, taken together on the other.

    But, forasmuch as the latest period of 3 years ending with the present year - a year not as yet brought to its conclusion would present /include/ causes of irregularity, as well in that account, as in the account of the influences that may be supposed to have been exerted, by the increase of the stagnation on appeals of both descriptions hear, and by the conception of that stagnation as entertained without doors, (in the number of bonâ fide Appeals /Appeals of both sorts.) let us take that period of three years which being at the same time [...?] enough to have passed under a Court of Session composed of the same Number as at present, shall present the greatest number of causes heard.

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  • Title: [2 May 1807 + D3 Letter V]
    Description: 2 May 1807

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    Turning in the first place to the Scotch causes, for 75 presented, and for 52 set down for hearing, and for 39 heard, we find 18 withdrawn and 11 dismissed for want of presentation, making together 29 of which we may be certain, without any exception, unless by some accident, that they were malâ fide Appeals: 8 reversed with one remitted, making together 9 of which we may be certain of their being bonâ fide Appeals: 30 affirmed, of each of which all that I can venture to say with certainty, is that it seems more probable that it was a bonâ fide Appeal, than a malâ fide one. Setting them all as bonâ fide ones, here then the numbers will be 39 and 29: proportion, bonâ to malâ fide, nearly as 4 to 3.

    From 75, the number presented, and from 52, the number set down for hearing, no ulterior indication respecting the proportion between the bonâ and the malâ fide Appeals seems deducible. In the Intermediate Courts the work being, in these manufactories of delay, performed upon the mechanical principle, efflux keeps pace with influx, and no irregularity is presented by the accounts. In the great Ultimate Court, in which the work is mostly done by hand (as the phrase is among mechanical men), so that human reason is necessary, that stagnation takes place, which has given your Lordship so much trouble: and hence it is that the numbers presented, and the numbers set down for hearing, differ from one another, as well as from the numbers heard. Presented, 75: set down for hearing, 52: heard, 39.
  • Title: [18 Apr 1807 Letter V III. Proper]
    Description: 18 Apr 1807

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    III. Proper Remedies

    III. Objection I

    2. By experience. By a variety of causes, which notices[?] of which on the present occasion have poured in from all quarters, the Court of Session, the Metropolitan Court of Scotland, seems to have been placed in a peculiar degree exposed to the risk of giving birth to misdecision. Yet of the whole number of decisions pronounced if one in ten, if one in 20 were to be set down as chargeable with injustices in this shape, setting aside the cases in which as in the annexed Table. (Tab. II) misdecision flows silently and unheeded out of delay, it would be a large allowance.

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    3. Whereof affirmed by withdrawing of the Appeal, or dismissal of it for want of prosecution (Withdrawn dismissed) ....

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