29 April 1807

Lawyers judged

What are the predominant - the professedly predominant considerations? the considerations that stand /put[?]/ foremost not in the learned hearts only but in the paper in which they are portrayed?

1. The personal interests of the author of the address - the Judges the personal interests of the whole body or of the leading Member or Members: the personal interests in respect of power, consideration, and above all in respect of ease.

2. The Union - the perverted letter of the Union - with its precursor /the other dead letter/ the claim of right.

First as to personal interests.

1. Art. 7. Parcelling out the jurisdiction of the President, as proposed by the proposed division into 2 or 3 Chambers is pronounced subversive of the President's right. How of his right? and wherein consists the mischief and the injury to which the Right Honourable is so acutely sensible? Chambers 2 or 3, with Judges in them all together 15 in number as at present, or some lesser number, will he not still rank above all of them? Yes: but when he is no more, his successor in the 1 st Chamber will not rank it is apprehended so high as the learned persons whosoever they may be, to whom it may happen to find themselves in the situation of Presidents of the 2 d and 3 d Chambers. Tremendous /Momentous/ objection! but is it not in the power of Parliament to remove it. Why vamp up /put forward into/ this character of an objection, a consideration which whatever were the importance of it could have no claim to attention in any other character than that of an amendment?

Art. 8. Thereupon it is, that in the next ensuing article the office the office of President as it now stands is flatly pronounced "unabolishable and indivisible: like the great Commonwealth that so lately we saw crushed to atoms, one and indivisible. "Indivisible?" what by his Majesty in Parliament? The negative, the very idea of which though not to be exercised but with the advise of a set of responsible and cross-examination ministers, can not enter the royal mind without pain, has it been made over to the presiding member, or to all the members put together of a Bench of Judges?

For the imaginary rights and unconjecturable feelings of his unknown successor, how tender /acute/ and tender the sympathy of the Right Honourable Judge! how trifling /light/, when weighed against it in the ballance are all public considerations /the ends of justice/!