1 March 1808

Letter VI

Omissa & Facienda

II. No Allegat n sans x examination

No English lawyer - no, nor yet any Scotch lawyer - none at least who had any acquaintance with Jury trial as practiced on the Circuits[?] can be insensible to the importance and utility of cross-examination in the character of a security for veracity and a test of truth.

Being to this degree good in some /so many/ cases, and those among the most important, why refuse /deny/ to /with hold from/ justice the benefit of it in any case? If thus there be a case in which the utility of it fails of being exemplified, the burthen of proof rests with those whom its utility in that case is untested[?].

In principle the case proper to be excepted have just been indicated: they are the case in which the inconvenience in the shape of delay vexation and expence is so great as to be preponderant over the evil in the shape of misdecision, actual or probable.

But these are not the cases in which the benefit of the security fro truth and rectitude of decision is with-holden: the with-holding of it is not determined /regulated/ by that principle, or by any principle having /having any sort of/ reference to the ends of justice.

The exceptions extensive as is their range in English law, to a prodigious degree more so in Scotch law, are determined by the /those/ allied powers by whose united influence the decisions of law /procedure/ are grounded, viz. Fraud and Accident: Fraud in the shape of Lawyercraft, Accident where Lawyercraft has found /seen/ no special [...?] to interpoze.