22 Dec r 1806

To L d Gr.

No English [...?] [...?] English Pleading

No natural pleading [...?] [...?] [...?] ([...?] [...?] Plea which ever could have been [...?].

Resolut. 5

pleading

On the subject of pleading, any departure from the Scotch mode in present me[?] admitts, if I apprehend the matter right, but of one alternative - blind and total adoption of the English mode, or recurrence to the natural mode. Adoption of the English mode, I have at once /at the same time/ too strong a conception of the power of prejudice, and too good opinion of Scottish taste and good sense and self-esteem /estimation/, to expect to find practicable /other than impracticable/. The Scotch Bar lawyer could than have to impart bodily the whole mass /chaos/ of our English Books of Entires, ancient and modern, with [...?] title Pleader, for a clue to it: by way of preparation for the research /study/ he would have to swallow and chew /digest/ the end upon the principle of multiplication, and the practice of fiction, [...?] species of jurisprudential turpitude in which the Scotch lawyers are but novices /almost [...?] in Scotch law/: regard for security[?] is an incumbrance of which he will have been sufficiently divested /disencumbered/ by his own forms or in forms of pleading, un der the sanction of the mendacity licence in which the [...?] on both sides are adorned in unlimited quantity, and on both sides, especially the side most in the wrong, with a studious avoidance of /religious abstinence from/ all methods in the character of undoubted /indubitable/ truths: but to finish his education, and compleat his complement /list/ of qualifications, the Scotch student will leave to come to London for law / the Scotch law student will have to come up to the imperial metropolis for jurisprudence law/, as we in London have sometimes gone to Edinburgh for physic, and unlearn whatever portion of taste and common sense his own /native[?] school may have left him (common honesty is out of the question) in the study /office/ of an English Special Pleader. I hope and trust, my Lord, I shall never have to see our brethren of Scotland reduced to such a state of degredation.