12 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

After Ch. ││ Hale's Plan

Ch. ││ Hale's objections

5. Towards the effecting /establishment/ of any such usurpation no considerable advance could be made by individual decisions; unaccompanied by any of those general propositions, of which the matter of law, whether in the form of statutory law or jurisprudential, real law or factitious, must be composed.

Supposing /Yet,/ /But,/ the conquest projected, these individual decisions were all that the House of Lords could have to make it with. No general body of doctrine had never been, or, under the eye of the other House was at all likely to be, framed for their use, adapted to this their supposed intended purpose. The Lord had no institutional writers among them, no Reporters.

The King, and his instruments the Judges, had their prerogative lawyers: for in those days what lawyer was there that was not a prerogative lawyer? Zealots for /idolaters of/ the prerogative, in fighting up with indefatigable zeal and industry, the two inseparable blessings, King's power, and Judges profit. A Lords-privilege lawyer was a sort of animal that had never been monster exemplified. In Prynne[?] indeed, the ever changing ever-voluminous, and ever violent Prynne[?] they had found indeed a hot defender of this power, so far as concerned right of possession, but not any instructor /instruction/ for this abuse, or for any use, of it.

6. The Lords, a comparatively numerous and scattered, and, in respect of the distinction between Temporal and Spiritual, a naturally divided body, as well as in respect of hereditary dignity and opulence an indolent one - had no such necessary occasions and opportunities for apocuilation[?] and concert not to say cabal, as the 12 Judges. No common cant or slang, serving alike for a bond of fraternity, and an instrument of depredation. No common Inn to dine at: No common Hall, with a central fire in it to dance around. to hear and give lectures in: - to confer degrees: to concert measures in, against the common prey and the common enemy.