12 Feb y 1807

Letter IV

Resolut. 6.7.8.9

Juries

Lawyers re fondness

Next /Lastly/ as to ease. On this head little further need be said. In Jury trial they find a mode of procedure which in this respect is surely every where else without a parallel, in which far[?] to any amount may be and continually are received and nothing done for them: not to speak of Motions of course so happily sprinkled over the whole course[?] of procedure with and without Jury trial, Common and Equity - fees for which nothing is so much as pretended, seriously pretended at least, in any instance whatsoever to be done. At Sittings or at Circuits that for which time is never wanting is receipt of fees: that for which time[?] is present or wanting as it may happen is rendering the service undertaken for these fees.

What is or is not possible is - to try the cause: - what is always possible, is - to receive the fees on pretence of trying it.

But this is but a truth in comparison of what it does or at least of what in early days, before the time of Judges was so completely filled up by profit-yielding business as it is now it did for the hands that reared it, and trained it up to its present pitch of perfection - the managing members of the partnership. It rid /eased/ /ridded/ them of all causes which afforded no profit at all and all that afforded no profit worth stooping to take up. The advantage with reference to the partnership in this respect is exactly /mathematically/ equal and opposite to its mischievousness (with reference to the people), in the character of denial of justice, with reference to the great body of the people.

And the case thus gained the case to which on the part of the people, is correspondent and commensurate to the denial of justice, ever without prejudice to that branch of profit to which on the part of the people os correspondent and commensurate the /that/ species of oppression already spoken of which is so much worse than denial of justice. I mean that which the partners both or neither of them, when under the notion of relief, in the shape of acquisition[?] or preservation of property in dispute, they embrace a remedy leaving them poorer than it found them, an affliction aggravating the disease: the apparent loser crushed to atoms; the apparent gainer, a loser; no real gainers but the lawyers.