1 June 1807

Letter V

III. Proper Remedies

1. Solvent

In practice ordinary profit by delay, as above described, presents no difficulty: extraordinary may sometimes be difficult to search out and discover. But in each instance unless it be pursued and enquired out, the object of the knave, with Judge and C o his accomplices compassed - factitious delay (the system allowing of it) is produced - the engagements taken by the main body of the law in this behalf disfulfilled and violated - the ends of justice disfulfilled - the aim of the legislator - if he be honest and not in confederacy with Judge and C o, frustrated.

These same distinctions which thus we have seen applying to money or money's worth considered as coming in in the shape of profit, may be seen applying, and with equal truth and propriety to money or money's worth considered as going out, in that shape of loss.

And with a view to prevention of loss, in the shape of damage, with or without injury, on the one side these same distinctions are not more intitled to the legislator's regard than they are with a view to the adjustment of satisfaction for loss, to be made to the sufferer, at the charge of him who, with or without injury, is considered as the author, or on any other score held bound to the reparation of it.

{What renders the propriety, of applying these several distinctions in question to this side as well as to the opposite side, the more prominent and unquestionable, is - that where the malâ fides is not, as most usually it is, on the defendant's side, but on the plaintiff's - and the object of his wish his intention not to acquire gain to himself, but merely to impose loss on his adversary, the actuating motive being not rapacity, but enmity, profit and loss will then be in a manner confounded: the loss to the oppressed constituting the profit, and the whole of the profit, to the oppressor, and consequently running on throughout in exact proportion to it.