15 Oct. 1807

After Ch. │ │ dvantages

Ch. │ │ Hale's Plan p.125

To a more extensive purpose than that of the particular point in question, this point may, if the reader be at once honest and intelligent, not undeserving of his notice: for it is after this fashion, and of such materials, that from beginning to end, if chaos had both or either the jurisprudential alias Common Law, is composed. On the present occasion a story is trumped up, or in plain English, a plump lie, known to be so /for what it is/ by him who utters it. A question was /Questions/ put to the man, here are two Courts of appeal, you may make your appeal to which you please: but observe this that whichever you make it to, you can not afterwards make it to the other. Answer by the man: very well. I consent not to make it to parliament, I make it to the Exchequer Chamber.

Now if any such notice had been given to the man (which to the knowledge of the venerable crime[?] of the lie there had not) then there would have been no lie: nothing worse than usurpation, and contempt of parliament. For who are you, Lord Chief Justice as you are, that have any right to shrut against any man the door of parliament? to assume that right, and upon the strength of it make terms with the man, and force him to give up his right of recourse to parliament /hope of justice at the hands of parliament/? You do not pretend to shut /Your pretensions extend not to the shutting/ the door of parliament against him, in the case of his knocking at that door in the first instance: then what power over that door is it that has been given you by the circumstance of his addressing himself to the Exchequer Chamber in the first instance? By the Statute of the 27 Elizabeth by which the Exchequer Chamber is created - by that Statute it is said that in the class of cases there described appeal application may be made to that Court by any one that will; but does parliament say that after having appealed /made application/ to that Court, a man shall not be admitted to make application to Parliament? - Not it indeed: this is not so much as pretended.