4 Jan y 1807

Scotch Reform │ │ To L d Grenville

III Facienda

Causes mostly short

Codification necessary.

So far as concerns the question of law, to afford the people in their character as suitors, a real security against misdecision there is but one course - and that /which/ is to give them in every part of /throughout/ the rule of action - to give them for their information and guidance in it - to give them so much real law. This real law - if it were what /made as it/ ought to be and easily might be - being made for the information and guidance of the people would have in it no other words than such as formed part of /belonged to/ the language of the people: or it, to save circumlocution it employed here and there a word not currently employed by them on other occasions, or to other purposes, still these abridged denominations would in the very text of the law some where or other, once for all, receive their explanation in words really belonging to the language of the people - already familiar to their ear. (But in such case what room would there be for any recondite, peculiar science? /legal learning or knowledge?/ for any thing that in a lawyers sense could receive /bear/ the appellation of science. All there is to be known is composed of /is expressed by/ the words of the legislator: and they are /lie/ all of them as open to the eye of the non-lawyer, as to the eye of the lawyer. to the eye of the suitor as to the eye of the Advocate or the Judge. Should the expression /In this or that particular article or articles/ fail in any respect of possessing the desired degree of clearness - in the sense /will and meaning/ of the legislator left to be aimed at /sought after/ by the conjecture, sill there is no more room for peculiar science than if the meaning were ever so indubitable: the reasonableness of the chance of rectitude on the part of the conjecture will in each instance depend - not upon science, but upon good sense.