16 May 1808

Notes?

I. Reasons

Ch.V. Advantages

§.│ │ Fiction ousted.

Another circumstance, the result either of accident or of some local cause, such as the comparative poverty of the suitors hopes - contributed to preserve Scottish judicature from being polluted in any considerable degree by these contaminations.

By an English Judge no lie was ever told by which he did not expect to get, by which he did not in fact get money: from which his successors of a collateral truth may be spoken do not continue to reap the same advantage. The most rebellious and flagrant of all judicial lies, the lie brought to view by the words common recovery, was a gold mine to the inventors and as it continues to be to their successors.

Whether it was that from suitors money enough could not be extracted under the name of fees, to afford to so numerous a company of Judges a mass of emolument asserted[?] to their rank of power, so it happened that it was in the shape of salary, of salary wrung from the scanty pittance of the crown, of salary and not of fees wrung from the still more scanty pittance of individuals that Scottish Judges received the pecuniary part of their retribution was received by Scottish Judges: at any rate in their aggregate capacity, as Members of the Inner House, for a yet scarce noticed source of emolument, the expedient of appointing Clerks to themselves, instead of applying to Parliament, in their separate characters of Judges in so many single-seated judicatories, and by their one collective authority levying prohibitory taxes upon justice, payable to themselves under the name of fees by the hand of their Clerks came not till afterwards.