12 May 1808

Ch.V. §.11.

Ch.V.

§.11. Litigation prevented

Ch.V. Advantages

§.12. Litigation prevented.

In placing this effect to the profit side of the account what most assuredly is not here meant is that check to litigation which is synonymous to denial of justice. I mean, that check which is applied to it by every voluntary addition made for example by official fees or taxes on either side to the expence attendant on litigation on either side of the cause. By every penny thus imposed, litigation - while it is prevented on one side is promoted on the other. If justice is thus denied to the relatively indigent, the faculty[?] of working in justice is at the same time sold to the opulent.

The effect which under the head of prevention of litigation is here in view is the prevention of those suits and of those contestations in the course of a suit, which otherwise would be the necessary result of the attempt to engraft Jury trial in civili upon Scotch Law in any other mode.

To bring the system of pleading, introductory to Jury trial, to the stage of perfection or imperfection, which ever be the more proper term, at which it stands in English practice, has been the work of many centuries. Incalculable is the number of individuals whom it has consigned to destruction in its progress to this stage.