date

13 Apr 1808 Ch. 4 '.2. dispatch
13 Apr 1808

Ch. 4

'.2. dispatch of business

Repose being the object, the objection against diminution[?] of repose, did not extend /apply//applied not to encrease of it. A favourable occasion /An occasion favourable/ to the danger [...?] presented itself: and that occasion was not neglected /did not pass unimproved/ and the opportunity did not pass unimproved. chance of encrease, presented itself: whatsoever might come of it, the opportunity was not to be neglected.

Supposing the Court divided into two judicatories, and supposing it ordained that the two should never sit on the same day, by so simple an improvement here was the quantity of repose doubled: setting aside Justitiary business and Ordinary's business, both paid for by extra profit, /half at the least of the total/ half the length of attend[?] at least was thus struck off at one stroke: the length reduced from six months to three months: the quantity /length/ of repose encreased from six months to nine months. In the case of the President at any rate, the Lord President himself a host, the addition to repose was neat.

Such accordingly was the plan exhibited by the two successive Bills distinguished by the name of the Lord President.
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    An arrear of more than [...?] years already accumulated, and still the favourable object - the object honoured by one acknowledged performance, not dispatch, but its grand enemy repose: power to clear away the arrear acknowledged: will to clear it away disclaimed; determination not to clear it away, at the expence of repose, confessed.

    Vendible delay manufactured in pieces of more than two years length, and the growing means[?] of length contemplated with a degree of philosophical resignation /serenity/ not to be exceeded by that manifested by the manager of a much /still/ higher concern which contemplating the pitch of perfection to which the manufacturers of the same species of prime goods has been [...?] on up; the length of a [...?] already extended to six years, with a prospect of [...?] encrease without [...?].

    Such my Lord is /was/ in that situation the state of the human mind, before the stimulus /principle/ of competition came to be applied to it. Such the disposition in which in the Court of Session Your Lordships enterprize found eleven at least out of the fifteen Judges. The stimulus applied, now let us see /observe/ the effects of it.

    In Your Lordship's plan the [...?] /main //principal/ features appeared to be division of the Court, and introduction of jury trial; to which Your Lordship's learned advisor, in whose eyes a set of [...?] to firm [...?] seats for merit were the one thing needful, added an Intermediate Chamber of Review. The order of things, was thus threatened with reversal: the ends of justice had avowedly been preferred to the ends of judicature: the security of the people to the power and dignity of the Lord President, and to the repose of the whole bench. The Jury-trial /box, intoducible/ practicable or not, beneficial or not upon the whole, operated upon learned mind as a source of alarm: peopled with usurpers the Intermediate Court became necessary to /was to be got rid/ get rid of it at any price.
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    Description: [094-374v]

    4 April 1808

    on L d Eldons Bill

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    In the year 1800, came the second Union the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. Another influx of the matter of reward into the pockets[?] of official merit[?]. The opportunity was a happy one: and it did not pass unimproved. In Table note

    In all these cases /Throughout that which pursued[?]/, the profit to the wrongdoer and his official probators increasing with the delay, and the delay increasing with the arrear.

    The instant it became manifest that an arrear would take place, and that the causes that produced it would contrive to act with a force continually on the arrears, the trade assumed a new now and still more smiling face, the reward secured to official merit as condoned by official situation, acquired a new value.

    In the instance of the House of Lords, so long as the judicatory is sitting, the mode of procedure on Appeal especially when compared with that of the Courts below has /presents/ little in it favourable to delay /if anything that seems open to the charge of being favourable to the production of facticious delay/. But the quantity of time applicable by the House to this comparatively unimportant part of its business being no more than what could be in a manner stolen from business of superior importance, and the interval of Vacation being of considerable as well as constantly uncertain lenghth and that determined by causes which have nothing to do with judicature, hence it is that in this instance, without assistance, because without need of assistance from learned ingenuity[?] /husbandry/, delay, wild as it grew on the waste of necessity, was always in sufficient abundance for the purposes of the trade.