21 April 1804

Procedure. Evidence

The distinction between a cause capable of being dispatched by the single course of procedure, and a cause requiring a complex course of procedure, depends /turns/ not upon the general /characteristic/ [...?] of the cause, but upon circumstances purely collateral and accidental: and upon its belonging of a purely penal[?], purely non penal /distributive/, or compound nature: nor upon its belonging to this or that division or subdivision of any one of these three branches. Some sorts of causes are more apt to ferment[?] a demand for complex procedure than some others: but if there be any that are in their characteristic nature so complex as never in no instance to be capable of being divided consistently with justice in the course of a single hearing, there are not many[?] /is not one/ so simple as are to be capable upon occasion of prescribing an adequate demand for a course of procedure more or less complex.

The distinction is an object of fundamental and cardinal importance: susceptible of being applied, and to an all comprehensive[?] extent, to legislative practice. Every system of adj...tive[?] law procedure which applies the same course of procedure without distraction to causes of both descriptions which consequently throws upon causes susceptible /capable/ of being determined in the recovering a determination, simple[?] summary course, the vexation, expense and delay attached to the complex mode /course/ of procedure, is prefigured[?] with so much collateral inconvenience - and which being upon the very face of it as then described, avoidable without prejudice to the direct justice of the case, becomes thereby /[...?] vent thereby to be/ so much collateral injustice.