3 Jan y 1807

Scotch Reform To L d Grenville

Facienda

After Oath

Causes mostly short

For the more correct estimation of the comparative importance of the different ends of justice (as compared with another) as well as for placing the importance of the natural system, as above sketched out, and the artifices of the technical system in the clearest point of view, there is one very simple consideration for which I would particularly beg your Lordship's attention: and that is the vast superiority of number on the part of those causes which for their conclusion and commencement taken together require each of them no more than a small fragment of a day, and consequently present no sort of demand for science /learning/ in comparison of those which requiring greater a length of time constitute the whole of that mass in which are to be /[...?] to be/ sought /found/ the part consisting of those for the due conduct and formula[?] which, in the present state of the law, learning /science/, and, in every state of it, appropriate skill and intelligence, may with propriety be considered as requisite.

For ascertaining this proportion, if not to a degree in itself approaching to correctness, yet to a degree of correctness abundantly sufficient for the present purpose, two main sources of information are open to us: - 1. One[?] is[?] the number of causes determined in a year in those Courts which afford the most extensive example of the application of the natural system of procedure to civil (non-criminal) suits, (I speak of the Courts of Conscience. The other which concerns regular i.e. technical procedure is the proportion between the aggregate number of Writs annually taken out (that is, causes commenced) in the several superior Courts of Westminster, and the number of causes brought to trial in those Courts.