9[?] Mar 1808

L d Eldons Bill

Letter V

§.6. Reasons

Ends of Justice

7. Delay

7. Delay. This evil, in so far as it is the work either of the Judge or of the system under which he acts, is, for so long as it lasts denial of justice. Provides chances of misdecision without number, it involves in its texture expence naturally and generally, vexation necessarily and universally. In the case of the wrongdoer, it is generally to a certain degree compensated: in the estimation of the wrongdoer by whose exertions it is purposely manufactured or purchased, it is of course compensated, and compleatly: but it is no otherwise compensated than in as far as it is productive of misdecision or undue and greater vexation on the other side. See Table of the Mischiefs of Delay, Table III.

For twenty eight out of a multitude of other shapes in which under the fee-gathering system in both kingdoms factitious delay is manufactured, manufactured under the system devised by Judges, for their own profit, and to the use of their own brotherhood, added to that of the fraternity of wrongdoers on both sides of the cause, see Table.

" Justice shall, under us, be denied to no man, sold to no man, delayed for no man. Thus promised the wicked King John, in the earliest and, to the path[?] outwards, the most sacred of our fundamental laws.

Under our present most gracious and religious sovereign, and by his correspondently religious servants and advisers, what is the sort of performance given to this promise? Delayed to all, denied to most, justice (we see) is sold, and at the extorioner's price sold, to the well-plundered yet still favoured few.