31 July 1806

Scotch Reform

Who is ny neighbour[?]? The word it[?] is their part[?] for ought to be. Had it been meant[?] and the man of law the interrogator, in duty no divinity[?], no imperative[?] would have been necessary /required to answer[?] it.

Perhaps so: but the plan being for Scotland, may not learned advice be listened to from English Committee[?] -

My Lord - who is the /[...?]/ lawyers neighbour? Is it the suitor any where? No, my Lord: it is the lawyer every where. Every where the same interests beget the same prejudice the same passions and the same art. Their reason is [...?]: they form a [...?] convoy and oppressing the whole of the civilized part of the world /human kind/.

I speak in the dark: and though my conjecture being but a random conjecture should be ill founded /my conjecture in regard to the cause of a particular incident,/ it will be no prejudice to the principle. I speak in the dark: but if an incident I have observed in a speech of Your Lordships on this very occasion should be found to afford an experimental proof of a proposition so plain in principle, it will be altogether in the natural order of things.

In that speech I observe /the Report I have seen/ a limit of arrangement so special that in comparison of it /without it/ the root of the plan will give the lawyer /professional man/ little to fear. Turning to the Resolutions, I perceive that arrangement draft[?]. When proposed by Your Lordship, being considered as a novelty /a sort of invention/, it was proposed with diffidence.

To what are we ascribe an [...?] so [...?]? Being so [...?] - originating perhaps in some unlearned head - in some such unlearned head as planned /framed/ the Grenville Act - was it not submitted to the appropriate judgment of some especially and extremely learned person, and was not his learned adverse to it?

The question is one of those presumptuous ones which presumptuous as they are do not so much as expect an answer. I presume not to force the penetration of the cabinet. Your Lordship's duty is to maintain silence: but say ought[?] is to impress[?] duties. I say nothing as to the arrangement here: the occasion for speaking of it fully will come presently.