May 1807

Scotch Reform

Letter VI

Letter VI

II Jury Trial

On this same ground of Jury-Trial I come now to the body of learning on the other side: the whole Faculty of Advocates speaking by the mouth of their Committee: still more and more support came from that opposite side. In speaking of the practice according to which the Judge who decides upon the proof has borne no part in the taking of it, they speak of it without reserve as being the only mode of judicature actually in use Scotland, and yet at the same time being so irremediably infected with the " abuses" which under that very name they have portrayed in such strong and such just colours, as to be altogether unfit for use. On this they ground themselves alike drawing a triumphant conclusion in favour of Jury trial; forasmuch as between that abusive mode "the present mode of taking proofs" (as above) "by commission, in a Jury trial" they "conceive there is no alternative.

But the Lord President (of that Court to which they owe so much respect and have paid so little this Lord President the head of their profession can inform them of a set of Courts in which more causes by many times over are annually determined than those which being the only Courts that afford fees to learned Advocates are the only ones of whose existence those learned gentlemen can persuade themselves to have /recognize/ any knowledge - and in which proofs are never taken by commission - always in the natural mode of which Jury trial is but an imperfect exemplification soever an /an exemplification, in what respects/ imperfect one .