8 Jan y 1807

Facienda

Causes mostly short

A bill being [...?] for, for giving to some district in England the possibility of justice for small debts

More than once, my Lord, have I had the pain of seeing a lawyer stand up and oppose the Bill - more than once it would be found (I fear) with success - because forsooth because the Commissioners of a Court of Requests are not Jurymen, and without Juries there is no justice. The hypocrits /[...?]/, and what is worse, the undetected hypocrites - knowing all the while, as well as he knew his own existence - that for the majority say /not to say/ rather the whole number of the causes that could now find their way to these Courts of Natural and uncorrupted and [...?] judicature, in the regular mode - that is with Juries there is not so much as the possibility of justice: unless it is justice for every man who has ,2 owing to him, to be made to pay ,7[?] for recovering it.

This circumstance that enables them to practice, and always with success and with a deplorably /deplorable degree of/ unearned success this barbarous imposture is this: viz: that over and above the blind and indiscriminate prejudice about Juries the circumstances in which security against misdecision depends or is supposed to depend lie open to observation without calculation or inquiry: but whereas the quantum of delay, vexation and expense, together with the force by which these evils tend to produce the further evil of failure of justice, depends upon matters /facts/ of detail, requiring scrutinies and calculations which a lawyer never chooses to make or at least to speak of and which any other man is /feels himself/ unable to make.