4 Jan y 1807

Scotch Reform │ │ To L d Grenville

Facienda

Causes mostly short

1. Question of law least important because least[?] frequent[?]

2. Technical forms[?] conduce[?] nothing to its being well judged of[?]

3. [...?] the only thing that can lessen the frequency of misdecision on this ground is not [...?] to but repaired[?]

By way of facilitating /To facilitate/ Your Lordships estimate of the real value of all this solemn plausibility /plausibility and all this sophistry - I would beg leave to submitt to Your Lordship three very simple propositions.

1. That with respect to the aggregate conduciveness /degree of subservience on the point/ /quantity of service rendered by/ of the system of procedure to the aggregate of the ends of justice accuracy of decision on the question /ground/ of law is compared with degree of ambivalence[?] to the other ends of justice - compared even with accuracy of decision in relation the question of fact, if [...?] inferior importance.

The proof of this proportion is extremely simple. It consists in the vast superiority of number on the part of the cases whose[?] in which action (the individual instances) in which no question of law or can take place, compared with the number of instances in which it does take place.

This exemption from controversy - this indisputability (it may be worth Your Lordships notice) is owing - not to any excellence on this part of that shapeless portion of the body of the laws which is of their own making (all that part which in so far as it is susceptible of existence exists in the shape of jurisprudential law ( jargonicé[?] Common Law in one of the five senses of it) but in this that the cases in most frequent occurrence (common actions of debt and common actions of assault) are of so very frequent occurrence - the same state of things so perpetually repeating itself, that on these subjects it has not been in the power of all their astutia to prevent the rule of action from setting into a tolerable state of fixity.