11 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

Ch. │ │ Hale's Objection

Had it lain within the reach of fraud and usurpation to establish a /an adequate/ system of taxation in pretence of judicature, the business would long ago have been effected, and by hands much better adapted to /qualified for/ the purpose, in point of sinister interest, and thence in point of astutia[?], than any that could ever be found at that time, and before the theatre of honour was deluged by upstart lawyers, be found in the House of Lords. In /During/ so many centuries /ages/ of supineness on the part of their superiors the Judges /Lawyer-Judges/ of Westminster Hall /and in possession of the undisturbed faculty of making whatsoever law it was possible to make in pretence of judicature/ neither[?] then had nor have since been able to make any greater advances in the plan /scheme/ of establishing a system of taxation for their own benefit any greater advances /progress/ than what has been made /consists/ by the taxes imposed on conveyances by and to the use of the Judges of the Common Pleas, and the taxes imposed on suitors by the Judges of all the Courts under the name of fees. +

For an example of what may be done indirectly in the way of legislation, by the exercise of judicial power, the field here chosen /taken/ by the learned Judge is the field of statutory law. In the field of jurisprudential law he might have found a soil much more fertile: and to shew the mischiefs /mischief/ that with the power of judicature in their hands might be done by all that was noble in the kingdom, he needed no more than /but/ to have brought to view the mischief actually done with the same instrument in their hands by a few vocal lawyers, seated on three or four benches.

Happily for his argument, the case of statutory law being /so/ by its simplicity and apprehensibility, so much better adapted to the purpose of illustration, saved him from the necessity of /so [...?] a necessity as that of/ presenting the eye of the reader to the seat of everlasting confusion and imposition.

+ Change the order of the sentence.