15 Jan y 1807

When adequate measures are taken, as they easily may be, as above /below/, for the prevention of proposed delay, vexation and expense, appeal to a Jury may without preponderant inconvenience be allowed, not once only, but an indefinite number of times.

But, for any time after the first, the reiteration ought to depend solely in the pleasure of the dissatisfied party: it should have for its sanction the fiat of a competent Judge, pronounced after a public hearing of the reasons on the one part and the other /for and against the application/.

Notwithstanding the necessity of this fiat, upon this plan it is still from the will of a Jury that the business receives its ultimate decision. Without the concurrence of a succeeding Jury it is out of the power of the Judge to reverse of alter the decision pronounced by any former Jury or Juries: and the Juries being supposed to be effectually placed out of the reach of all undue influence on the part of the Judge whomsoever it happens to him /his opinion/ to get the verdict of a Jury in its favour, the supposition that it is by force of reason, and by the subsidine[?] correction of opposite errors and the subsiding of opposite passions that the conversion has been produced seems altogether a reasonable one.

Any excess in the exercise of this sort of a negative power on the part of the Judge, would naturally arm against itself the public resentment and counteract its own purpose, and produce on the part of all succeeding Juries a force of resolution continually /constantly/ /perpetually/ and for any length of time and number of attempts adequate to the frustration of the intended sinister purposes