14 Feb y 1808

on L d Eldon's Bill

Lett. VI

Omissa and Facienda

1. No Reporting

2. Ends of Justice

II. Under the name of analogous practice Stentor Authority having pronounced /bellowed forth/ his ipse dixit, let no lead[?]-on[?] ear[?], if we can prevail upon ourselves /if the fatigue be endurable/, to the "still small-voice" of reason: observing /and let us observe/ how, without any [...?] advantage, the proceeding /procedure in the cause/ is unfolded with the several evils opposite to the several ends of justice.

1. Evil the first - danger /[...?]/ of misdecision: viz. misdecision in the superior judicatory above for want of sufficient information.

From the judicatory of a judge /is become/ who has collected /possessed himself of/ whatsoever portion of information he has chosen /it has pleased him/ to collect in relation to the cause, it is sent off by him for further procedure and decision to another judicatory which /composed of judges who/ whatsoever ulterior information it may please them to collect have not received undiminished[?] the whole body of light which had presented itself to the eye stationed on the inferior level: in its passage through that lower seated medium feel to have undergone diminution to a greater or[?] less amount, though to what amount it is impossible to say by any general rule.

Even allowing that the whole body of light /information/ has passes on [...?], still no advantage in the respect in question can be pointed out as resulting from the change. Having begun the cause /suit/, what should hinder him from going on with it and finishing it?

2. Another source of misdecision is this - From a judicatory composed of /constituted by/ a single Judge, who has no colleagues to thwart his operations and perplex his thought, the[?] suit by this reference is lodged in a many-seated judicatory, in which in the first stage of the cause /suit/ (for at the stage of appeal the case is different) finds as many obstructions and perplexions[?] as he sees colleagues.

3. Then comes the anticlimax already pointed out /dwelt upon/ in the first of these letters a cause transferred from a single Judge, subjected as such to the whole[?] of responsibility[?] in its greatest form to a many-seated judicatory composed of judge amongst[?] [...?] in which [...?...?] that which is in a great degree dissipated and lost.