18 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

Letter VII

Letter VII Eldon's Plan

At the outset of my first address to Your Lordship, [...?] in the very nature of the case a certificate of Your Lordship's being provided /under the necessity of providing yourself/ with a learned advisor, I numbered among the advantages of obscurity, that of not knowing /my compleat and wilful ignorance/ concerning the person to whose share that honour had fallen: the same obscurity secures to me the same advantage in the present instance.

That the learning of the noble Lord who is at the very head of learning whose learning forms the very summit of the pyramid, may to a first glance wear the face of a solecism /inconsistency/ should need or admitt of any such co-adjutor howsoever learned as one to whom any such title as that of Advisor can with propriety be applied, is a notion which at /to a/ first glance may be apt to wear the face of solecism: but by a very short reflection on matters of fact unhappily but too notorious, any seeming incongruity will I flatter myself be removed.

What Your Lordship, I am confident, as well as every other reader whose misfortune it is to have any the slightest acquaintance with Westminster Hall understands me already to have in view is the extreme pressure of that portion of the business which /that/ flows in upon that side and and[?] of it which is occupied by the Court (of Chancery) which has but one seat in it and that filled now for the second time by Lord Eldon. The pronouncing of decrees /decision/ when so it has happened, that in virtue of a gift become of late years somewhat rare /which in our days has not fallen to the share of every Chancellor/, a Chancellor feels within himself /finds himself endowed with/ the faculty of making one /coming to a decision/, is among those obligations, which if it were possible for obligations of the perfect class to reach so high, would in that station be acknowledged to be perfect and indispensable. The framing of Bills is an operation which of late years seems to have been regarded as superfluous,