29 April 1807

Lawyers judged

Art. 50. In the concluding article (Art. 50) the predominant regard for personal ease is neither dissembled, nor covered /vouchsafed to be/ so much as with a veil of common decency. Penetrated /Filled/ with /Full of/ the importance of this object not so much as a suspicion that the relative importance of it could subtend any lesser[?] angle in the eye of the people or of Parliament, could find places in those learned minds:

Enacted (they say) by the Bill that the Chambers (in number three) shall continue to sit (to sit alternately says the Bill) to sit in vacation from day to day, till the cases before them are exhausted. "With such a regulation" (it is observed) "the present system, without any change at all, would be equally effectual": but such regulation (it is added) "is totally inconsistent with that periodical repose, which the labourious fractions, both of the Judges and Counsel, absolutely require."

A periodical repose, necessary and to what amount? to the amount of half a year /six of the 12 months/ or the whole, 3 months at a time /at two periods of 3 months each/. This over and above every seventh day, that consecrated[?] day ordained by religion, and, in the case of other functions far otherwise and more intensly[?] laborious than the function of sitting upon a cussion to dispose of the fate of one's fellow-creatures, regarded by all Christians as sufficient and by non Christians as even more than sufficient to every good purpose. One fourteenth part indeed of that portion of holy day time indeed occupied (that nothing may be left unnoticed) one fourteenth part of the above[?] idle time of each learned Lords, as such times[?] as can be best addressed to aggregate convenience, bestowed upon the Bill-Chamber.