JB_094_353.xml

Title: [28 March 1808 Letter V Power]

Description: 28 March 1808

Letter V

Power to Session

Rotation

In London, six hundred pounds a year is found sufficient to [...?] in so far as depends on official attendance throughout the year, an uninterrupted course of judicature

/administration of justice/, in a /system/ two-seated judicature, three judges being allotted to each judicatory, with an allowance of four months of repose to eight of duty /labour/ to each Judge. At Edinburgh the same quantity of remuneration would, unless money has less value at the northern metropolis than in the Southern be sufficient to secure[?], so far as depends upon continuity of attendance, the same compleat fulfilment to this one[?] at least one of the ends of justice. Six hundred a year is actually allotted and with no inconsiderable addition, the prospects of which in other accounts I mean not to dispatch.

This continuity of attendance, if it be thus purchasable where[?] the sum of it has in a place called a Police Office as in an Outer[?] House[?] or a Bill Chambers in the Court of Session would be purchasable without any [...?] difficulty that I am able to discover, although the sum of it were to be in a different room, such as a room called an Inner House in the same edifice.

But it did not accord with but the pleasure of the Right Honourable person who presides over the 15 learned Judges in question to give any such degree of fulfilment to this end of justice: in himself, in his own particular person, he himself was in possession of six months of perpetual /altogether undisturbed/ repose in two portions one of four months, the other of two months, [...?] two /contiguous[?]/ days out of every seven, and it was his determination not to give up so much as a single hour of this periodical repose to the [...?] which they might to the justice[?] and to the people of Scotland in the character of official [...?...?] suffering[?] ends[?] injustice.

+Memorial. art. 50

JB_094_352.xml

Title: [28 March 1808 Letter V Power]

Description: 28 March 1808

Letter V

Power to Session

Rotation

Time for relaxation being, though physically speaking impossible to be allowed in the one case, capable of being allowed without difficulty in the other, it was in this instance, /and it should seem with unimpeachable propriety/ allowed accordingly: allowed with as small an expenditure of public money as could have been allotted to the purpose: to each judicatory /above //beyond// the constantly necessary [...?]/ one [...?] Judge, and but one.

In the Act for the establishment of these judicatories /by which these judicatories/ I behold with delight and exaltation an /one/ instance in which the ends of justice , in general and dispatch of business, [...?] avoidance of delay in particular were the objects to which the [...?] of the legislator was really and without grimace directed. If any one will help me to [...?] hypothesis, by which, without running into palpable contradiction, it may be in my power to attribute /ascribe/ the same view and [...?] to the learned penner of the Bill, my sincere thanks shall /are/ be at his service. I could not which[?] manufacturing factitious delay by wholesale and devising measures for fastening it like a millstone [...?] in a manner never to be detached, about the neck of justice. Seeing one object compleatly accomplished by one man, by measures placably and undeniably directed to that end /and manifestly adequate to it/, I can not /know not how to/ say of any other man, nay though he were a Lord Chancellor /the head of the law/ and an Archbishop of Canterbury in one, that I believe his views to have been directed to the same end, perceiving /seeing/ at the same time less measures taking a direction exactly opposite.

093-426.xml

Title: [26 Oct r 1807 L d Eldon's Bill]

Description: 26 Oct r 1807

L d Eldon's Bill

Had any such regard existed, or did any such regard exist at the present moment, the demand by which the exertions[?] occupied in the production of the Bill were brought forth that demand the existence and the justness of which is confessed and proclaimed on all hands, never could have had existence.

If powers adequate to these ends - or at least to an approach infinitely[?] nearer than has ever been made to those ends, there never has been any wants[?] /a deficiency/. That of /The article/ in which there has been and is a deficiency - an utter deficiency - is adequate motives: and for the supply of this deficiency nothing has been done by any thing that has been brought forward on either side.

If a system bonâ fide directed to the ends of justice, - if the system of natural Procedure having been applied to this subject by the higher powers, were to be put into the hand of the Court, whether in its whole /entire/ or in its divided state, there need be little apprehension of its not being conferred to. But for the joining in the framing of any such system, in that place motives always have been, and still are utterly wanting: and in such a case to want motives is to want means.

If ever there had been a time in which a sincere regard for those ends were really prevalent, as great a regard at least and in the nature of things a greater, would exist /be to be found/ at present.

But at present no such regard does exist. By eleven out of the 15 present Judges all such regard has been solemnly and deliberately disclaimed: and to ascribe it to them would be not compliment but mockery. But of the twelve months of which the year is composed, six with a few particular exceptions too inconsiderable to be here worth asking are dedicated in the words of those Members of justice to " periodical repose". Of that 6 months not a moment have they considered without declared[?] repugnance as capable of being sacrificed to the ends of justice.

+ Minimal[?] Art. 50. p28