Evidence

1 July 1805

Introd

Ch Regular useless

. Jury

In /civil/ causes called civil under the existing system it continually happens that the At present the operations /inquiry/ that should have been compleated in one sitting, requires two or more constituting in effect so many distinct and distinct causes, one or other party having been unprepared and in some way or other taken by surprise. Whence this surprise? For want want of those previous explanations which in the summary mode could not but have taken place, taken place at the very first meeting.

Trial by Jury is unavoidably encumbered with an expense from which summary procedure is free. The Jury might in all instances as already they do in most instances, be made to give their expense and labour gratis. But by an arrangement of this sort the burthen so far from being annihilated is increased. It is [...?] /made to pass secretly and severely/ upon a few instead of being laid as by equal taxation it would be laid equally upon the whole community, and thus rendered nearly imperceptible.

At any rate upon the plan here proposed, the burthen of Jury service, wheresoever is reduced to the least quantity - to which being so laid respectively, it is in its nature to be reduced.

From the [...?] number of O[?] number /so frequently laid upon the/ twelve, and the almost constant employment of this number for definitive trials for all trials but the useless preparatory one before the Grand Jury, one would think there were some unequal virtue in the number. Were the spell ever to be dissolved, that, in many instances at least, it might then appear, for every real purpose of justice, a number considerably less inferior might serve.