16 May 1805

Evidence

Introd.

Ch. Reconciliation - Offices

The court without power of inflicting punishment, under the name of punishment, but with an untainted[?] power /possessed of an unrestrained faculty/ of interrogation, and therefore /thence/ not without the power of calling for compliance with their advice, under the penalty of present shame[?].

No cause in any other Court without previous examination in this Court. Therefore no mala fide demand or mala fide defence capable of being set up without having been previously brought to light and to shame in this Court.

No compulsory power for converting the[?] recommendations of this Court into obligatory mandates. For what reason refuse this /withhold a/ a power seemingly thus indispensable? perhaps for this, that /not[?]/ the Court, not having any men of /'professional and experienced men of/ law amongst them, should make decisions pregnant with compassion[?], because repugnant to the tenor or purport of existing and established[?] laws.

But would it be absolutely impossible to find an honest lawyer who for all the rewards that profit /salary/ or honours could bestow could not be prevailed upon to act under the natural system of procedure? Is the conception of an honest lawyer so compleatly visionary.

In the English Courts of Conscience the same practice /design/ /policy/ and perhaps with the same view with regard to /so far as concerns/ the exclusion of lawyers, I mean from the bench, appears generally to have been adopted: the object was the getting rid of those technical rules the observance of which would, in relation to that humble and limited sphere of notion have been altogether incompatible with /[...?] to/ all justice.