17 Jan y 1807

Omissa

Outer House Appeals &c

True it is, that, close to those instances of a single stage of Appeal, English practice furnishes other instances of two /and/ or even of three/ stages. But from /by/ this exuberance in one quart, not the slightest proof or presumption that one /the/ stage of Appeal is not /less than/ sufficient for all cases, will be found deducible. No supposition superiority[?] of difficulty in the one class of cases compared with the other - for in both instances a cause of the same class /sort/ travels through the three stages or through only two of them, as it happens. In both instances then the intermediate stage of Appeal is a mere redundance. The Court of Exchequer Chamber is as already stated no only /merely/ a superfluity, but a most pernicious nuisance. The Court of King's Bench, in its character of an intermediate Court of Appeal between the Common Pleas and the House of Lords, is another nuisance of the same kind.

In Equity the Court of the Lord Chancellor, in its character of an intermediate Court of Appeal between the Court of the Master of the Rolls and the House of Lords, does not certainly to a degree approaching /comparable/ to these others claim the appellation of a nuisance, but still it can not be mentioned as any thing better than superfluous /a superfluity/. Why? - because whether in this case the additional stages shall be travelled through or not depends - not upon the nature of the cause - not upon any extra demand for consideration which one sort of cause can present when compared with another - but upon a circumstance entirely /purely/ foreign and accidental and irrelevent - viz: the will of the plaintiff or rather that of his sollicitor: according as it happens to be the determination of the plff as the suggestion, and under the guidance of his lawyer to have the cause set down to be heard before the Master of the Rolls, or before the Chancellor in the first instance.