[094-373v]

4 April 1808

Letter V

Ch. 3

By this fixation a sort of compromise was made, and the two opposite interests, those of the Judges, and those of the lieges - [...?] and God - for sale[?] in the religion of the Court of Session is the ends of precedence, served at the same time. Among the ends of judicature, if indeed there were ever any others, judicial repose, occupied in the order of precedence as settled by the Lord President and the art of his fourteen Colleagues, at any rate the first [...?]. According to the composition of the Right Honourable and learned Lord /Memorial art. 50/ division of the Inner House into two judicatories would by necessary consequence have governed the quantity of this greatest of public benefits /judicial blessings/. For though in England, viz. in Westminster Hall, where judicial convenience is not altogether disregarded, three judicatories having cognizance of the same courses, do continue to sit all along[?] on the same days, yet at Edinburgh, there was a something /in the [...?] perhaps/, that rendered such simultaneousity[?] impossible. Memorial arts 4 "At the Chambers are only to sit, and indeed can only sit alternately. If at the Scottish Bar which is said not to afford more than about ,3,000 a year for its busiest and most illustrious members, there were any whose quantity of business would be subjected to reduction, by the division of the Inner House into two, and the law of nature which forbids two bodies to exist a at the same time in the same place, the impossibility of such simultaneosity would naturally in that other set of illustrious eyes present itself in a equally strong light. Happily for the lieges, making the whole learned Faculty together, the [...?] of the greater number of its members are not so compleatly filled with business that the division in question would have the effect of causing any considerable part of that business to overflow and escape. Accordingly what in the eyes of the great majority of the judges was physically impossible, was in the eyes of the still greater majority of the Faculty of Advocates indispensably necessary. /Resolution 2?/