24 April 1807

Letter V

Inadequate compensation

V. Bail-baiting

VI-VII Bail-Baiting.

In the reinforcement of learned advisors, pressed into the service between the framing of the Resolution and the drawing of the Bill, Your Lordship has, I suspect, numbered either some Englishman lawyer or some Scotchman born fitted up into one anglicized and made into an English one.

The ' cautioners' introduced into this same section, are I am inclined to suspect, English Bail dressed up in the Scotch stile - "Bond for the debt and costs awarded in the said Chamber, with such cautioner or cautioners, as the said Chamber, upon examination of the cautioner or cautioners upon oath in open Court shall approve."

What? find fault with my Bail clause? (cries Your Lordship's learned Adviser) so practical, so unexceptionable - so universally approved? Here is a man that nothing can please: he finds fault with every thing.

My Lord, the history and adventures of this Bail-baiting clause are curious enough. In the English branch of the technical system it is a perfect anomaly: it is a sprig of the natural system, but so ill-applied, as to be of no use. From the sprig thus incapable of coalescing with its first stock a twig is now proposed to be stuck on upon the Scottish branch of the technical System, with which if possible it is still more mis-matched. It puts one in mind of what one sees now and then in another sort of theatre, when a jeofail has happened among the scene-shifters: a piece of a ship with a few waves belonging to it sticking on a steeple or a tree.