29 June 1807

*2

Note Judge

Letter V

II. Litigation

It is neither practicable nor would it be advisable to you to refuse satisfaction altogether and for wrongs of all sorts or indeed of any sort. Not practicable, because neither the legislator nor the people would endure it: not advisable, because if no satisfaction were ever given and this were universally known, which it could not but be, none would ever be demanded: in a word, there would be no such thing as litigation, which is the very thing you want to encrease. Not to insist on "honourableness and laudableness, which are always in the train of profitableness", Lett. §.534 few things in this world are so profitable as good pleadings, Father Littleton himself has said so: and if there were nothing to plead for, there would be no pleading, good or bad.

But so long as satisfaction is provided - i.e. so long as in each case the party wronged can be brought to suppose that satisfaction in that case has been provided, so long as the value of it in his eyes be not brought down so low, as to appear not worth suing for, regard being had to vexation as well as expence, the lower the real value of it

can be kept the better: because the lower it [is] in point of neat and real value, the greater is the probability that in the eyes of the proposed wrongdoer, the weight of it in the shape of a burthen suspending over himself, will be overballanced by that of the benefit looked for by him as the fruit of the wrong which he has it in contemplation to committ.