28 March 1808

Letter V

Power to Session

Rotation

In London, six hundred pounds a year is found sufficient to [...?] in so far as depends on official attendance throughout the year, an uninterrupted course of judicature

/administration of justice/, in a /system/ two-seated judicature, three judges being allotted to each judicatory, with an allowance of four months of repose to eight of duty /labour/ to each Judge. At Edinburgh the same quantity of remuneration would, unless money has less value at the northern metropolis than in the Southern be sufficient to secure[?], so far as depends upon continuity of attendance, the same compleat fulfilment to this one[?] at least one of the ends of justice. Six hundred a year is actually allotted and with no inconsiderable addition, the prospects of which in other accounts I mean not to dispatch.

This continuity of attendance, if it be thus purchasable where[?] the sum of it has in a place called a Police Office as in an Outer[?] House[?] or a Bill Chambers in the Court of Session would be purchasable without any [...?] difficulty that I am able to discover, although the sum of it were to be in a different room, such as a room called an Inner House in the same edifice.

But it did not accord with but the pleasure of the Right Honourable person who presides over the 15 learned Judges in question to give any such degree of fulfilment to this end of justice: in himself, in his own particular person, he himself was in possession of six months of perpetual /altogether undisturbed/ repose in two portions one of four months, the other of two months, [...?] two /contiguous[?]/ days out of every seven, and it was his determination not to give up so much as a single hour of this periodical repose to the [...?] which they might to the justice[?] and to the people of Scotland in the character of official [...?...?] suffering[?] ends[?] injustice.

+Memorial. art. 50