13 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

After Ch. │ │ Advantages

Ch. │ │ L d Hale's Plan

which by means of this his plan, the venerable Judge is bent upon the prevention of /so determined to prevent/. But how prevent it? but how? - One means there is and but one: viz. by so ordering matters, that the number /multitude/ of unlearned and thence "not so competent" Judges, shall in such sort and degree be kept from being " too excessive," as to be always outnumbered by the /exceeded by the number of/ learned ones.

In Lord Hale's time sollicitations, as he himself tells /informs/ us, + were in practice in the House of Lords. At that same time the King, as we learn from other sources, ║ was /used to be/ of the number of the sollicitations. Here would have been an article to have placed in the list, if not at the head of the list, of the " mischiefs and inconveniences", to which, and by the bare mention of those words, he was contented /he deemed it sufficient/ to allude. Why not /For what/ reason not put it there? For decorum? - for prudence? - not so since in the same work he has brought it /stated it/ to view without disguise.

A capital objection to that judicatory in its present form it can not be decried[?] to be, and as such has been already noticed. But Lord Hale? did it lie in his mouth to urge it in that character? was it in the power of his plan to be served by it? The King's influence might in this way have been exhausted (on behalf of the defendant in Error suppose the gainer by the judgment below) and in that judicatory not improbably was every now and then exhausted, and his point not gained. But in Lord Hales judicatory how would it have been? To gain his point without more ado, the King had nothing to do but /more to do than/ to do nothing. The trouble of sollicitation with the shame /odium/ of the attempt, and the modification attached to a fruitless one, would have been saved to him altogether.

+ Hale p.204

║ Burnet /[...?]/ in Barrington's Observat s. on the Statutes p.23