date

5 Sept 1807 Scotch Reform 11
5 Sept 1807

Scotch Reform

11

Letter V or VI

L d G.s opinion of Lawyers

These were in one[?] or other [...?] saleable [...?] officers[?] should have been consolidated.

Here, my Lord, was something like a lawyer. This man, I speak it with great submission, was the man for Your Lordship's purpose.

Here was a man who if you had put a Bill into his hands to support would never want to know what it is.

Here is a man who, if you had twenty Chambers of Review to defend, one above another to support, would have supported them all, and with a vigour proportioned to their number and their bulk: when the Person is an Atlas, the heavier the edifice, the greater his alacrity, because the more illustrious the display he makes of his strength.

Right and wrong are the creatures of law. Before the Act is passed, twenty such Chambers may be more than enough, it may be wrong to have so many. But let the track of the sceptre be but once given to the Bill, the twenty Chambers though there were fifty of them, are become law, and now all is right, and every thing is as it should be.
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  • Title: [10 May 1807 Scotch Reform Letter]
    Description: 10 May 1807

    Scotch Reform

    Letter VI

    Letter VI

    III. Review Chamber

    That whatsoever be the number of Chambers into which the existing Court comes to be divided, they shall not sit any two of them the same day. And accordingly that their anxiety may be the surer of finding itself relieved /its relief/, a discovery is made that any such arrangement as that of a simultaneous sitting on the part of two or more of such Chambers is a physical impossibility: an impossibility discovered by the same penetrating eye that discovered that a mode of judging most excellent for ,5, was incapable of being applied to ,5:1 s.

    It is on this impossibility it is that is grounded the inescapable bar to the institution of the /division into/ three Chambers, as proposed by the Bill instead of the two, the numbers proposed by those learned Memorialists. This impossibility that three Courts of co-ordinate authority can sit in or near the same edifice at the same time for further proof of which see the 4 Courts continually sitting at the same time in Westminster Hall being [...?] in a parenthesis, the consequence is undeniable /undisputable/ beyond dispute/ As they can only sit alternately, a considerably greater quantity of business will not be done by these Chambers than by two - at least not in a degree sufficient to counterballance the inconvenience (where are they?) which will arise from the greater number of Chambers + As the said three Chambers can "only sit alternately", "this inconvenience (art. 4) and confusion" (what inconvenience what confusion?) "will be increased and all method and regularity in the arrangement of the Rolls, and in considering the business of the Courts, much impeded."

    This is so my Lord and without dispute, what in Scotland are the real and what are not the real ends of judicature, and in England may not the same right be seen, and with equal clearness, spite of all disguises?

    + They propose 5 at [...?] viz Outer Houses

    +1 "and indeed (art.8) can only sit alternately)

    +2 an impossibility, which under the impossibility of finding proof for it, not to say colour of proof, is for shortness likewise for-granted:
  • Title: [5 Sept 1807 Scotch Reform]
    Description: 5 Sept 1807

    Scotch Reform

    (9) 9

    Lett. V or VI

    L d G.s opinion of Lawyers

    To this same lawyer the same transaction presented itself in a somewhat different light. Whether it was for want of making the proper distinctions, or from what other cause, it seemed to him that a Swindler was still a Swindler, whether he made one use of the money or another. He observed indeed that it was for a long time past that a man had been indulged with Swindling licences at so cheap a price than that of either being already a gentleman or converting himself into one by so easy a process as the one already mentioned. But it seemed to him that these licences having had so long a time to run had had time enough: and that it was now time for Parliament to withdraw them.

    Here, however, he found that in reckoning upon Parliament he had for this time reckoned without his host. A discovery had been made that this conceit of his about making gentlemen pay their debts was among the fruits of a conspiracy, that had been formed against social order. A counter-association was therefore entered into, for the protection of Swindlers, being members of the landed interest, against the machinations of Jacobins and Levellers, of which number are all those in whose opinion it is the part of a gentleman to pay his debts.
  • Title: [8 May 1807 Scotch Reform Letter]
    Description: 8 May 1807

    Scotch Reform

    Letter VI

    Letter VI

    Recapitulation

    The ideas submitted in the preceding /foregoing/ letters have some of them found a very unexpected support in those delivered in the Memorial signed by 11 out of the 15 Scotch Judges: others from a passage or two in the Report made to the Faculty of Advocates by their Committee.

    In two[?] of the three /two or three/ Courts with 5 Judges in each as proposed in the Resolutions [...?] three Courts by the Bill, I ventured to propose single seated judicatures throughout - as many of the Lords of Session as those to be resorted to sitting in separate Courts. This idea to the extent of ││ in number is among the proposals contained in the Memorial - Out of the 15 judges 11 or omitting the President 10 at least, consent to be employed all their lives long in the character of Judges acting [...?], even with[?] the rest[?] sitting above them in a Court with 5 or ││ seats in it.

    With the benefit of such an arrangement as this there will be neither occasion nor use for the proposed Chamber of Review. To this I heartily accede: but with this addition - nor for the proposed Chambers of Session neither.

    The proposed Chamber of Review is by its local station /proposed situation/ disqualified from answering the purpose of the /the due discharge of any of the functions/ here-proposed Court of Lords Delegates.

    The proposed Chambers not of Review are disqualified in the same respects by the same cause.