9 May 1807

Scotch Reform

Letter VI

Letter

II Jury

To one of these reasons I can not subscribe. They say /insist/ upon it/ the task of directing a jury, they insist upon it, is too much for them: it is quite strange to them. (Their Lordships by much are too diffident of themselves.) This modesty is inadmissible. For learning natural justice I have already recommended divers schools to them: discite justitiam moniti. For the direction /not directing/ learning to /how/ direct/ of a Jury, I will recommend another. In London and Middlesex together are contained alone c th[?] part of the population of England about b d of the population of Scotland. The Sheriffs of London who are also Sheriffs of Middlesex and who change every year, name for[?] their leader Sheriff an Attorney: this Attorney names his Clerk if he does not prefer his Sherblack[?]. In all Jury-trial causes the few excepted in which damages are not demandable, it rests with the defendant whether the trial shall be directed by a learned Lord or by this ││ any body /substitutes substitutes substitute/ /delegatus delegati[?]/. The task which in England is never thought too arduous for an Attorney's Clerk, in Scotland shall the very highest class of Judges shrink from it as beyond their force?/ above their competence/

"The benefits of Trial by jury" (say the Memorializing Lordships art 18.) "can not be expected to reach from it independently of the skill by which it is conducted, and that skill can only be acquired by experience." Among the signatures to this Memorial is that of the Lord Justice Clerk, and besides these of I know not how many more of the &c members of the Justiciary Court, by whom in matter of life and death Juries are directed. Of this learned dispensation of criminal justice /Ask him, my Lord, upon his next visit to the seat of paramount judicature/ I should be curious to know /learn/, what was the length of his experience the first time he ever sat, and if having no experience he had no skill /being without experience he was also without skill/, by what oversight it happened to take upon him an office, when in his own opinion at least, he had /wanted/ not skill to execute.

Yes, my Lord Ex-Chief-Justice you who with the master engine of iniquity the principle of nullification, on your hand struck insecurity[?] and dismay into the hearts of so many millions of Mahometans and Hindoos for their non-observance of this latin maxim, which is not observed even in the corruption in which it was hatched /amidst the corruption which gave birth to it/. Hear my Lord Chief Justice Impey[?] of the ghost of Nuncomar[?] that long[?] has left you in possession of your senses this delegatus delegati.

/whether pecuniary causes or causes of life and death are of most importance/.