15 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

After Ch. │ │ Advantages

Ch. │ │ Hale's Plan

The catalogue of learned inconsistencies is not yet at an end; (nor would be although a volume were consumed upon them, a volume many times larger than the text.

It is between the two above mentioned per saltum cases that he brings to view the case of where the judgment a man would appeal from is a judgment in the Court of Exchequer. In this case "it seems" (says he +) that notwithstanding the statute of "Edward the 3 d (31 E.3.c.12.) that gives power to the Lord Chancellor and Treasurer to examine and reform errors in judgment in scaccario[?], a writ of error may lie in parliament, (as well as in the instance above given touching the King's Bench.)" If the praise of consistency can not be here bestowed (on the venerable Judge,) the praise of candour can not, for the moment at least, be refused. For "Quar[?] tumun[?] (he adds) "for" (says he) I have not known[?] it done.

Would you have the source of so apparently inconsistent a facility? Look to the head, that in this case would be overleaped or not overleaped, and you will hardly be much /not be greatly/ at a loss. They were the heads of the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Treasurer of the cause (a): for to these some how or other, as if in distrust of other heads, the appellate jurisdiction had been given by the still better experienced Parliament of Edward the third: to these arithmetically-learned heads, not to any of the law-learned ones.

+p.126)

(a)  The supposition was at first that it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer: but this is perhaps disproved by the Statute of Elizabeth 31 El.c.1. in which the chancellor in question is in the preamble stiled Lord Chancellor: if so, the subsequent epithet[?] arithmetically-learned will not apply to both