10 June 1804

H

Procedure (1)

Ch Basis

'.8. Turkish

 After Ch[?] [...?] on domestic Tribunal

Of Turkish judicature /justice/.

A Turkish Court of Justice, and to speak more generally, a Court of justice proceeding according to the mode of procedure in use in Mahometan Countires, may be considered as little more than the domestic tribunal, furnished only with more extensive powers. A mode of procedure having no technical rules to fetter it, adopts of course the fundmental arrangement here distinguished as the only just and natural one. It convenes[?] the parties /litigants/ in the first instance, and brings them face to face.

Yet Turkish judicature is bad enough: worse probably than the worst of European judicature: - Why? because the natural /this findamental/ arrangement though it will do much, will not do every thing: though no judicature can be good without it, yet without other securities, it is not sufficient to institute good judicature. It will not of itself institute a good public. It will not supply the want of a written rule of action - a body of statute law pointing out every thing that is to be done or not by all suitors. It will not constitute a good public: it will not render the Judge dependent on the preappointed rules of positive law, and unless it be the law of public opinion, independent of every thing else. Though his probity be ever so pure though his zeal abd oublic spirit /public spirit and love of justice/ be ever so sollictous and active, it will not furnish his mind with that prodigious stock of apposite and instructive information, which it requires ages to accumulate - the histories of the judicial transactions in individual causes, [...?] down by reporters, and methodized by institutionalists and abridgers. It will not: but no art /skill/ can avail for compressing into a single paragraph the substance of a whole work.