27 Feb r 1807

(3

Letter V

Resolut 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

These four (11 th, 12 th, 13 th, 14 th) have not so much as for their professed object the abridgment of the aggregate mass quantity of delay absolutely considered: but only the relative quantity, viz: so much of the total quantity of time as is consumed while the causes in question continue in that highest Court: and such in that quarter and so notorious is the urgency of the pressure, that for the benefit of what defalcation may thus be made from this relative quantity, it seems understood that an addition made to the absolute quantity might be made without paying too high a price.

Even in profession these four Resolutions can not therefore be considered as aiming at the prevention of unnecessary delay and thereby ministering to that one of the ends of justice. If it be asked to which of those ends it is or to which of them it professes to be directed, prevention of misdecision is manifestly the only one that in this view can be named.

So material is this distinction, and so strictly are the aims of the learned Reformer confined to the abridgment of delay, in the relative sense of delay, that in Resolution the 14 th in which costs are proposed as an instrument for cutting short the number of frivolous and vexatious appeals, the application of the intrument such as it is is not proposed to extend beyond that portion of the aggregate mass of causes of which that supreme Court has found itself the receptacle.