12 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

After Ch. ││ Hale's Plan

Ch. ││ Hale's objections

8. the Lords could never stir a step, but under the eye of an apparently co-ordinate or inferior, but with the power of the purse in their hands and the power of the people at their back, in effect superior power, elbowing them under the same roof, and while this treatise of the venerable author was writing /penning/ already in open conflict with them.

The Judges, look where they could, saw /could behold/ no rivals; except the King, no superiors; in the muck out of which they had risen, none but obsequious instruments /no adverse watchmen/, aspiring junior partners, indefatigable panegyrists and adorers.

9. Distinct in some measure[?] /sort/ from the argument of /grounded on/ utility or inconvenience, though of no proper weight but in so far as reducible to it, is the argument from supposed inconsistency and self-repugnance. "Inconsistent" (says he) would be the state of things, which, dividing the supreme legislative power among three authorities, should give the supreme judicature to one of them alone: + inconsistent therefore the state of things which, dividing the supreme legislative power among King, Lords, and Commons, should give the supreme judicative power exclusively to the Lords. But, by ridding the government /constitution/ of this inconsistency, (and, comparatively speaking, we have seen how innocent a one) how much inconsistency would he upon the whole rid it of? - Not an atom. For, supposing the supreme judicature not to belong to the Lords, we have seen what becomes of it. It rests with the King himself, exercised without any responsibilities on his part, legal in as much as moral; perfect or so much as imperfect: exercised by those his instruments created, removable and removable again, by him (for so they were then) at pleasure.

+ p. 207