date

7[?] Feb y 1808 on L d Eldons Bill
7[?] Feb y 1808

on L d Eldons Bill

Lord's time

Pursuing for the moment, and like[?] the [...?] course for descending into particulars, the same strain of general allegation, I venture on to submitt another proposition I am prepared to prove, that in the plan taken for administering this shame[?] relief the learned Reformer has trusted[?] over and over again upon the priviledges of the House of Lords.

Your Lordship will scarcely I believe suppose that in my view of the mischief ended[?] there it would form any very serious obligation to the measure. But my Lord in the privileges I have in view as in the prerogative of the Crown, a valuable part of the inheritance of the people: and whatsoever sacrifice Your Lordship's generosity may have reconciled you to the making in this shape, I a poor Commoner[?], can not give my consent to that being[?] made.

So far as concerns the reduction of this disastrous burthen, the means provided in and by the Bill bearing the name of the noble and learned head of British law are confined to those proposed by the learned Memorialists: for that part of the mischief which is composed of the growing influx, a remedy altogether inoperative proposed: for that part which is composed of the already accumulated, nothing whatever proposed to be made in the character of a remedy.

It is now some time since a plan designed to cover the burthen to the whole of its extent, avowed and not avowed actual and probable, including both these parts, was addressed and humbly to the noble and learned Lords, as well as to Your Lordship, and every other Lord of Parliament.
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  • Title: [[...?] 18 1808 on L d Eldons Bill]
    Description: [...?] 18 1808

    on L d Eldons Bill

    Letter V

    Eldon's & J.B's course

    I [...?] now to submitt to Your Lordship that course which had any such [...?] befallen be as that of holding the pen for the noble and learned Lords, would have presented itself to me as preferable: together with the considerations which, in the character of reasons , would have given birth to such preference.

    1. In the first place I should have placed[?] all together such regulations, if any, on the expediency of which I had made up my mind, or such sort as to be decisions of seeing them established in the usual mode, and as it were outright, by one direct immediate /and in point of time immediately/ exercise of the authority of Parliament.

    Here there would have been a first basis, and to the extent of the field occupied by them, a line /boundary/ of marked out humility the exercise of the functions committed /authorities entrusted/ to the subordinate classes of functionaries.

    2. In the [...?] place would have come the description of the /delineation of the body of/ authority intended to be given to Commissioners for proposing regulations, [...?] if in a word so nearly attend[?] to innovation be endurable, a plan of reform, together with powers of inquiry adequate to the collection of the body of information necessary. /(for authority unprovided with power it would not have occurred to me to think of bestowing.
  • Title: [2[?] May 1807 8 Feb y 1808 on L d]
    Description: 2[?] May 1807 8 Feb y 1808

    on L d Eldons Bill

    II. Appeals

    Mischief of the delay trade

    V. Mischief of this traffic, of the Delay-trade

    Such, my Lord, being the nature, and such the profit - that is my point - part and parcel thereof at least, consecrated in the persons of learned and reverend Judges, noble or not noble, to the reward of merit - to be reaped, and reaped accordingly by these persons[?] hands, from their connection with the dear offspring of their loins, their best customer and highly-valued and respected pupil profit the malâ fide suitor - alias the self-conscious wrongdoer, who, in accomplishment of the precept of the sage, is not less perfectly known to himself than he is to these his reverend and indefatigable creators and preservers.

    Such being the nature of the gain in one hand, let us turn to the other side of the account, if Your Lordship pleases, and take a correspondent view of the price at which such merit is crowned by such reward: viz. the nature of the loss which presses upon the injured party, (in general the plaintiff) whose property is diposed of to such pious uses:- of the burthen, and of the circumstances attendant on the manner in which it is thrown upon his shoulders.
  • Title: [19 May 1807 + + 7 Letter V]
    Description: 19 May 1807

    + + 7

    Letter V

    I. Plan

    2. Abolition of Appeal against Interlocutors, - a remedy from which the remedial tendency is precarious, the pernicious boundless. A postulate assumed in it, is a natural, clear, and unpassable line of distinction and demarcation - drawn or at pleasure capable of being drawn, between interlocutory judgments and final ones. On this head, my humble conception of the matter, is - as Your Lordship will see, that no such line has ever yet been drawn - that no such line was in a way to be drawn by the hand of Your Lordship's learned Adviser, or any other learned hand: and thus that the prohibition of Appeals against Interlocutors would sometimes amount to nothing, producing nothing but that litigation which it professes to prevent - at other times to worse than nothing, operating as a prohibition of Appeals against judgments, interlocutory in name, but final in effect, and thus undermining and reducing to inanity, as far as that one of the three kingdoms is concerned, the superintending judicial authority of the House of Lords, and the legislative authority, of the imperial legislature of which it is a branch. But of this too in its place.

    Your Lordship will scarcely, I believe, suppose that if, in my humble view of the matter, the mischief ended in the voluntary surrender of a part of the exercise, if mere honorific privilege, forming one of the feathers in the cap of an aristocratical assembly, it would form[?], in my estimation, any very serious objection to the measure.

    But, my Lord in the privileges to which I allude, as well as in the prerogatives of the Crown, I behold a valuable part of the inheritance of the people: and whatsoever sacrifices Your Lordship's generosity, in your character of a Lord of Parliament, may have reconciled you to the making of in this shape, I, a poor Commoner, intervening and praying to be heard pro interessi meo[?], can not reconcile myself to the seeing of them made.