[091-185]

29 Dec r 1806

Scotch Reform

To L d Grenville

Omissa

3. Pleadings

 Add[?] Equity[?] mode of bringing to Issue without direction [?] viz: General [...?] by [...?].

My Lord, I am inclined to flatter /[...?]/ myself Your Lordship will already have recognised the impossibility the Scotch Courts will be under of bringing [...?] to one Issue - in other words, that is, of employing a Jury in the trial of civil causes, without doing one or other of these things: viz:

1. Hereby the Issue forwarded and directed in each individual instance by the Court, as in an English Court of Equity, when they send a cause /question/ to be [...?...?]: in which case the delay vexation and expence of English practice will be [...?] not substituted[?] to that /the already intolerable 2/ of the Scottish - not substituted.

2. Importing the English form of pleading in globo , exactly as they stand at present: importing, /making up and for the swallow[?] acute clearsighted class of [...?]/ into a supremely well informed and sharp-sighted nation, a cargo of lumber which when taken from under the clouds of prejudice to which alone it stands indebted for not being universally recognised for what it is /country, a mass of nonsense in n immense [...?], without the sweetening of prejudice that in England makes it go down so glibly/, will b seen to be a compound of lies and nonsense and other surplusage, for absurdity and depravity /wickedness/ altogether without a parallel on the surface of the globe. My Lord I am as far from [...?] as I am from [...?] to see that moral and high-spirited, non-lawyers or even lawyers - submitt willingly o any such degradation /depravation/: and what I am quite as sure of is that Your Lordship neither has thought nor ever will think of forcing them to it. In Your Lordship's plan, had I any such [...?], I would begin with conquering them in the first instance.

3. Copying and extending highest[?] might [...?] papers of particulars in [...?] side, with admission and demand in defend [...?].