Jan y 1807

To L d Greville

Facienda

Outline

Appeal & Jury

10. If there are twenty facts thus unconnected with /independent of/ each other - each of them may be tried in a different place and consequently in a different Sheriff - Wick, if the effect of such division be, as frequently it may be attended with a diminution of delay vexation and expense.

In English trial by Jury, under the technical system, learning consists in use made of learning or in which the great study is to find pretences for defeating right, if on a second trial, a witness who should have proved the fact of the marriage in fact indisputably proved on the first trial, and necessary to be proved because not doubted if even then, happens to miss the appointment, or is kept out of the way, the adulterer goes free.

Pretended immunity no more to be exacted from Juries on these non-criminal causes, these in Scotland they are at present in criminal ones. The only pretence that could ever be found for this relick of barbarous profligacy - tenderness of life and so forth - in criminal causes ││ even this miserable /wretched/ pretence has no application to non-criminal ones. On this subject my lord, I hear a report which alarms me. But should any such attempt to corrupt the national morals and the national understanding really be made, the Scotch nation will betray such a disregard to morality and good sense as I am unwilling to suspect them of, if without remonstrance they submitt themselves in the capacity /character/ of Jurymen or in any other character, to be forced by torture to committ perjury.

If English Judges had been in use to kill] Debtors for their own eating instead of helping to starve them in prison without eating them English Lawyers would be as strenuous and unanimous[?] in proclaiming the necessity of these meals to the preservation of the constitution, as now they are in proclaiming the matchless excellence and indispensable necessity of that constitution which by unresisted breach irreststible torture converts into perjurers its favourite class of Judges.

/of that forcing machine, by which good men and true //jurors// are manufactured by wholesale into perjurers/