23 Dec r 1806

Scotch Reform To L d Grenville

Resolut.6

Jury

The natural mode of collecting testimony by reciprocal examination and cross examination on trams, parties present as well as Judge and so forth, being good for ,5, required to prove it bad for ,5:1[?] - be pleased, my Lord, to observe how the problem has been solved /solution the problem has received/ by the Lord President and M r Hutchinson. And what, would your Lordship suppose in their median[?] of proof? Why, my Lord the /Blackstone's/ old hash passage out of Montesquieu. Judge, my Lord, of their distress. The greater the quantity of factitious delay, vexation and expence, the better the security against misdecision and failure of justice: in a word the dearer your justice, the better. Food for justice in the mouth of a Judge the argument will not be less so for bread in the mouth of a Baker: There's your loaf for you, give me your penny for it: or if it suits you better stay till tomorrow and give two pence for it, it will be as good again. Then came the story about Turks and bastinadoes: by what you /we/ are desired to believe, though it is not expresssly stated, that in every Court of Conscience and every Justice of the laws[?] study, a pair of bludgens are kept, with which the feet of plaintiff and defendant are beat to a jelly, before they are let out.

My Lord, when a lawyer attempts to prove /is considered enough to //is ill enough advised/ his system to be any thing better than a system of legalized pillage, this is what he is reduced to: he has nothing else.

Formalities of technical judicature the safeguards of justice! My Lord, under the name of devices Your Lordship has seen a list of the contrivances that constitute the characters /constituting the principal/ of the technical, the existing system formalities included, whatever was meant by formalities. My Lord - it has been shewn of them one by one - there is not a single one of them, by which the chance of misdecision is not encreased, the chance of good justice lessened.