15 Jan y 1807

Then again as to the number of successive recurrences. When the appeal is on the question of fact alone the number, as above stated, need not have any pre-defined limits. Between Jury and Jury there is not subordination: they stand all upon a level: it is not as in a chain of Courts one mounted above another: when once the appeal has got /risen/ to the highest, then of necessity it slips.

Among Juries, setting aside the English distinction between Common Jury and Special Jury, of which however no such use is made, we expect not to find one Jury better, more trustworthy, than another. There were formerly indeed the Grand Jury on Attaint[?]: a Jury of 24, whose business was to devote[?] to ruin the Jury of 12, as often as they saw any reason for thinking differently: but here ended the number of stages among Juries: and for this century and a half or thereabouts happily the upper stage has not been used.

But as between Court and Court, on the question of law, the grand object being the importance of the decision in the way of precedent, the appeal has naturally been from a Judge supposed less trustworthy to a Judge regarded as more trustworthy: and in this line of ascent the number of stages it is evident could not be long before it comes to its ne plus ultrà /an end/.