24 Dec r 1807

Scotch Reform

(2)

Letter V

Ch.│ │ Omission Cause

By the creation of the proposed Chamber of Review, the good purposes on both sides will be happily accomplished. On the one part friends will be provided for influence extended, and the regulation gained by staving off denial of justice, in appearance at least, and for a time, from hanging any longer over the House of Lords, so serious a reproach as that of a compleat and inexorable denial of justice.

To effect this improvement in the state of Scottish judicature, it will be absolutely necessary to represent the present state of it in colours by no means to its advantage: and for this purpose to bring particularly forward those features of disadvantage which are calculated to make the strongest impression on Parliament and in particular, on the House of Lords.

But of all its features the most promising in this view is the enormity and continual encrease of the demand made upon the House of Lords for its time by the Appeals from the Court of Session presented to that Most Honourable House.

By bringing this object into view both objects will be compassed at once. Keeping to the word Appeals, it will be matter of intuition - matter out of the reach of dispute, that by the Scotch Appeals the demand made on the House for its time is in a[?] much considerably degree greater than that made by the English Appeals. Exclusive of all such considerations of time, it will moreover - and on ground equally out of the reach of dispute, that the number of Appeals presented to the House of Lords, from the one judicatory of the lesser and least populous, is much greater than the number presented to the same supreme judicatory from the largest and most populous of the three kingdoms.