14 Feb 1807

letter IV

Resolut 6.7.8.9

Juries

But on the /On the/ ground of the number of persons to whom by means of the expense the of the protection[?] of the law is denied in all civil cases the nature and amount of the price paid in this article /shape/ for the services whatever they may be of the learned persons to whose eye alone (except /excepted/ that of their partners[?] the malâ fide suitors in both sides of the cause excepted) the technical system causes[?] presents itself in a still more simple point of view.

There are the great body of the people, to the amount of three fourths (not to push the inquiry any further) kept, to the extent of this system, in a state of perpetual outlawry to all civil purposes: excluded from the benefit of that comparatively inexpensive branch of technical procedure which affords Jury trial, excluded still more peremptorily from still more expensively branch called /which assumes and profanes the name of/ equity.

But of the evil /mischief/ admitting it to be an /one/ evil, consisting in the exclusion of three fourths But of /To this degree/ three fourths of the whole number of the people may thus /to this degree be excluded from the benefit/ without any evil work /inconvenience/ [...?] be excluded from the benefit of civil justice, why not the remaining fourth? how slight soever the inconvenience in the present case of the exclusion put upon the three fourths, if it were extended on to the remaining fourth the addition thus made to the inconvenience would amount to no more than a fourth more of that which exists already, and which is so light as not to be felt as any thing, by those by and for whose by whose benefit it is produced.