date

23 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform To L d
23 Dec r 1806

Scotch Reform To L d Grenville

Resolut.6

Jury

The natural mode of collecting testimony by reciprocal examination and cross examination on trams, parties present as well as Judge and so forth, being good for ,5, required to prove it bad for ,5:1[?] - be pleased, my Lord, to observe how the problem has been solved /solution the problem has received/ by the Lord President and M r Hutchinson. And what, would your Lordship suppose in their median[?] of proof? Why, my Lord the /Blackstone's/ old hash passage out of Montesquieu. Judge, my Lord, of their distress. The greater the quantity of factitious delay, vexation and expence, the better the security against misdecision and failure of justice: in a word the dearer your justice, the better. Food for justice in the mouth of a Judge the argument will not be less so for bread in the mouth of a Baker: There's your loaf for you, give me your penny for it: or if it suits you better stay till tomorrow and give two pence for it, it will be as good again. Then came the story about Turks and bastinadoes: by what you /we/ are desired to believe, though it is not expresssly stated, that in every Court of Conscience and every Justice of the laws[?] study, a pair of bludgens are kept, with which the feet of plaintiff and defendant are beat to a jelly, before they are let out.

My Lord, when a lawyer attempts to prove /is considered enough to //is ill enough advised/ his system to be any thing better than a system of legalized pillage, this is what he is reduced to: he has nothing else.

Formalities of technical judicature the safeguards of justice! My Lord, under the name of devices Your Lordship has seen a list of the contrivances that constitute the characters /constituting the principal/ of the technical, the existing system formalities included, whatever was meant by formalities. My Lord - it has been shewn of them one by one - there is not a single one of them, by which the chance of misdecision is not encreased, the chance of good justice lessened.
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    Thus again as to learning - Our Shoemaker, were he to take to Law-making, would have a pretty many things to learn, there is no making a doubt of it. But as to unlearning, what would he have to unlearn? - why nothing at all my Lord.

    And these two preeminently and to appearance appositely[?] learned personages what would they have to unlearn does Your Lordship ask, to qualify them for making laws directly to the ends of justice. Oh, my Lord, surely Your Lordship will not [...?] at least put any such question to me at least if your Lordship can have found so much patience for me, as to have to glance at the Appendix. My Lord, in one word they would have all those decrees to unlearn, those engines of the technical system to unlearn the use of, which they are so expert in: nullification, Fiction, Jargon, Receipt of evidence in bad shapes, grant of mendacity licences refusal to have or see parties, judicature on mechanical principles, sale of delay and so forth.
  • Title: [23 Dec r 1806 Scotch Reform To L d]
    Description: 23 Dec r 1806

    Scotch Reform To L d Grenville

    Resolut.6

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    After all that has been said does your Lordship suppose that I would discard Juries /Jury Trial/, or that my attachment to it is less strenuous than if I had taken for a [...?] to my Couch? My Lord, the misconception, though not altogether /certainly not/ an unnatural one, would be a compleat one. Not that I know of my merit or demerit in seeing one scheme better adapted than another to the ends of justice: but so it happens, there for /by/ not being indiscriminating it is not the less /already and sincere/ firmly rooted. Applied to cases of the most important if not the largest description, it appears to me / in my view of it/ that the compilation, which is as much as to say every thing valuable to us, depends upon it. Applied to /cases not/ non-criminal, if applied in certain terms and conditions, it appears to me /in my view of it/ (I am speaking now of Scotland) it may be applied with great and indisputable advantage.

    Details, I dare not here presume to trouble your Lordship with: time and space do not admitt of it but in the way of outline, I will take the liberty of stating to your Lordship what these terms are.

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  • Title: [8 May 1807 II. Omissa Letter]
    Description: 8 May 1807

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    I am arrived at the 2 d of the three topics announced in the opening of the first of these letters. viz.: Omissa: things [...?] which, according to my humble conception of the matter, ought to have been proposed in a Bill /Plan/ having for it object "the better regulating the Courts of Justice in Scotland and the administration of justice in Scotland therein" and in the Bill /Plan/ in question are not proposed.

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