date

29 Jan y 1808 Appeals that
29 Jan y 1808

Appeals

that when to the delay produced without any arrear came to be added the delay produced by an arrear /and that a quantity/, destined to unlimited increase, every thing which before was as it should be became /was destined to become/ better and better still ad infinitum; and the fund of reward waiting to be poured into the lap of official merit had no longer any bounds.

Under these circumstances, the thing desireable in the first place was /before all things was/that on this ground nothing should be done: but surprising this situation of undisturbed reform untenable, then came the next point of policy, that whatsoever came to be done under the notion of reducing the delay should be as much as possible in demonstration, as little as possible in effect.

Hereupon came the plan devised by Your Lordship learned reformer: a plan of which /[...?]//on the subject of which/, considering the consideration of the state of elegance[?] in which it lies for the present, renders it happily unnecessary for me to expatiate /to particular at present/.

But from what I have had occasion already, your Lordship can not but perceive /understand/, that in my humble view of the matter, it was on the ground here in question not merely an exemplification of the sort of doing nothing, but a very considerable improvement on that agreable and useful art.
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  • Title: [29 Jan y 1808 Appeals In the]
    Description: 29 Jan y 1808

    Appeals

    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.
  • Title: [10 Jan y 1808 Elucidations to /table]
    Description: 10 Jan y 1808

    Elucidations to /table IX, X, and XI

    (f)

    (Arrears of each year) This column, together with then two next, viz ( Gained upon the Arrear) and (Total amounts of Arrear) (viz. in each year) deduced as they are from those comprized in the official Accounts, are here added, for the purpose of applying the information the more closely to the object in view.

    (g) ( Gained upon the Arrear) The comparative degree of dispatch given, in these the following years viz. 1797, 1798 under the management of Lord Loughborough, compared with the Arrear which, commencing in the next year (1799), continued thenceforward to encrease, is an object, that ought naturally to attract notice.

    (h) ( Totals remaining upon the Arrear) These results are deduced, by subtracting from the numbers presented in each year, the numbers disposed of a disposed of viz. in one or other of the three several ways, viz. by the Appeals being either heard, withdrawn, or dismissed. Had every year produced an Arrear in that case in each year the total amount of the Arrear [...?] in the course of the whole period down to that year inclusively would throughout have been exhibited, by the simple operation of adding to that year the Arrears of the several preceding years. But, as the Table exhibits two years (1797 and 1798) which, instead of making an addition to the total amounts of Arrear in those years respectively, subtracted, each of them, a number from the total amount, hence came the necessity of interposing, between the Column and the Column expressive of the Arrear of each of the years that afforded in Arrear, the Column expressive of the numbers upon the Arrear, viz. in the only two instances in which any such extra dispatch took place.
  • Title: [20 Jan y 1808 Elucidations to Table]
    Description: 20 Jan y 1808

    Elucidations to Table IX, X, and XI

    A natural question here is, whether the number 145, the number expressive of the total amount of the Arrear, accumulated in the 13 years and part of a fourteenth comprized in these official Accounts, delivered in as they were on the 11 th of March 1807, comprized the whole of the number remaining in arrear and waiting to be disposed of at that time? The affirmation seems not improbable but in regards to the amount of the arrear neither that conclusion nor any other can be deduced to a certainty from any information afforded by these Accounts. That in 1793, being the year immediately preceding the commencement of the earliest of the two periods comprized in these Accounts, an arrear existed, is manifest on the face of them. For at the end of 1796, being the 3 d year comprized in them, the Total amount of the arrear accumulated in this period was no more than 15: and in the two next years 1797 and 1798 taken together, we see 24 Appeals disposed of over and above the number presented in those same years: deducting then 15, as being the Arrear formed during this period, there remains 9, a number which must already have been remaining in arrear, at the commencement of this same period. But in addition to these 9, there may have been at the commencement of this period, arrear to any amount: an arrear which if existing will be to be added to 145, the numbers exhibited by the last column of numbers in this Table.