13 June 1804

Procedures (3)

Ch Basis

Domestic

In the technical forms /plans/ of procedure, witnesses, and especially /but mere [...?]/ those who from their situation are best acquainted or the only persons that have been at all acquainted with what has happened, are refused a hearing /to be heard/ find the doors of the Court sht against them, upon an endless variety /a variety/ of pretences. - Why? because examination of a suspicious /suspected/ /extraction of the truth out of the lips of an unwillingness[?]/ witness requires because the extraction /suspension[?]/ of unwilling evidence, and the weighing of contradictory evidence requires talent as well as industry /labour/ - and refusal to bear it requires neither.

A course which might be dispatched in an hour were the parties brought face to face in the presence of the Judge and thus examined vivâ voce is spun out for months or years: persons without number being employed all the while in scribbling papers without end: /+the Judge under whose order every thing is supposed to be done, either hearing nothing at all of /about/ the business the whole time /from beginning to end/, or not taking it up till all this labour has been thrown away /wasted on it/. Why? because for every word thus scribbled, one man or another is paid at enormous rates, every man connected in some way /character/ or other /by some tie or other of interest or sympathy/ - dependance[/] community of profit, personal intimacy professional per[?] [...?] at least with the Judge with those by whose power had not the wish been wanting, the abuse might have been from the first prevented, or at one time or[?] other[?] done away. even the Judge himself commonly a valuable property to no small amount in the shape of hard money, in every useless vexation either neglected by his orders, or nursed /cherished[?] [...?] [...?]/ by his connivance.