19 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

Letter VII

Letter VII Eldon's Bill

Along with the Bill which, under /in/ I know not what hand comes endorsed to me with the words L

d

Eldon's, come two others endorsed respectively in the same hand. L d President's Bill and L d President's 2 d Bill, both without any other date endorsed than the year, neither of them having any intimation of an Order for printing (made by) the House.

Comparing the Lord Chancellor's Bill such henceforward I shall venture to call it with the two Bills of the Lord President, I find to so considerable an extent a coincidence, as shews the Lord Presidents plan to have been taken as a basis by the Lord Chancellor.

In my last Letter which was honestly written before this /the present one/, written indeed in the main several months before any one of these three Bills came into my hands, I was exulting at the auspicious coincidence in so many essential points between the ideas of the learned Lord at the head of Scottish Law, and those of the adventurous and unlearned as well as untitled individual who has not the honour to be /no such honour as that of being/ at the head or so much as the tail of any thing that ever went by the name of law.

(Taking up his Lordship's two Bills for the purpose of the present Letter (I have at the outset the mortification to find alas! find at the outset all that exaltation at an end.) at the very first glance all that exultation stops, and the repose of despondency takes its place.

(Great however as is my concern, my disappointment is not equal to it.)