24 March 1805

Evidence

Securities

Ch. Procedure Technical

''. Summary & Regular

A distinction that coincides in some points with the above, is a distinction the terms of which are much more [...?] - viz: that between the summary /the summary and regular/ mode of procedure, and the regular But the terms /appellatives/ in question - natural and summary on the one hand, technical and regular on the other hand - want much of being interconvertible. Taken /[...?]/ in the aggregate, natural procedure as above described is beyond comparison more summary, more expeditiously dispatched than the regular. The former has of course /naturally/ the prevention of delay for its object, the latter as naturally for the reason already mentioned the production of this inconvenience. But in the nature of things it is not in the power of the natural procedure /system/ to be alike summary in all cases. Causes there are of which form a dozen to a score may be begun[?] and ended by the same Judge in the compass of the same day: and happily of a nature thus favourable to dispatch was a /the/ great majority of causes. But if at the commencement of the cause the [...?] of a necessary witness be at the antipodes, the time spent in /necessary to/ a voyage round the globe will be but a part of the span of time necessarily enclosed[?] /included/ between the non-measurement of the cause and the termination of it. In the 2 d and 3 d modifications as above described of the natural system of procedure, the impossibility of summary justice if by summary justice be understood the speedy termination of the cause results from the characteristic circumstances by which the necessity of demand for the correspondent deviations from the shortest and straitest course is produced. In this occasion as in all others, delay /lapse /consumption of/ of time/ is the natural and necessary result of local distance. But natural procedure arises if course arises in every case as being summary; and in proportion as it fails, the failure is the result not of this system considered in itself, much less of the system considered in contradistinction to the technical, but to causes exterior to both, and to each of them alike invincible.