1819 May 18

Disfranchisement

§.5. Evil 4 Encreasing Country Members

7

3

For one common fruit of this common sinister interest take the case of that arrangement which is so dear to them the arrangement of Common Law i.e. Judge-made Law by which Landholders are to an unlimited extent, and without possibility of prevention enabled to prey upon all classes of community and in particular the class of tradesmen and shop keepers in the character of unpunishable swindlers. As a ground for his judgment whether to furnish his goods or no, all that a /the most prudent/ Shop keeper can possibly ascertain is whether for any considerable length of time the person by whom an order is given for goods has maintained the appearance which his house furniture, domestics and equipage if there be any exhibit, if to this appearance is added a title especially if it be a title of nobility certainty is thus rendered still more sure.

Mean time the /those[?]/ members of the higher orders as they stile themselves have for any length of time been plunged into an abyss of debt, borrowing of A to pay B. or buying of A goods to raise money upon to pay B. with. When he does his heir goes unencumbered to his heir at law or other mixt Remainder-man /in remainder to the estate/: those who have lent him money and those who have sold him food, have to go to law with one another, and with their respective lawyers try to gain advantage over one another, for such share as they hope respectively to come in for in the produce of the sale to be made of the unconsumed remainder of his goods.

This arrangement was made of old, not by Parliament /in the way of Statute law/ but in the way of Common Law: that is by lawyers, for the benefit in the first place of that aristocracy to which they belong and in which they find the largest part of their prey, in the next place of their own particular tribe, in virtue of that enormous and endless mass of litigation, and delay, expense and vexation disappointment, misery and despair of which it is one of the most productive sources.