25 Oct r 1807

L d Eldon's Bill

'.8.

Senior Judge

Difficulties are not yet at an end. Of these two Courts called Divisions are it must some how or other be remembered, whether on this occasion it did or did not happen to our learned draughtsmen /pair of learned legislators/ respectively to remember it contains 8 Judges indeed, but the other but 7. To difference of opinion such is the general lot of mankind, and more especially of the learned and fee-fed part of it, all times[?] are[?] alas! but too liable: the one Division as well as the other. Now then, as before the regular President is absent, whether by the operation of a cause ab intra, such as sickness and so forth, or by a cause ab extra - viz. the visit to which at the call of the other division he is subject. The number left now is six: and in case of [...?] this number is one that admitts of an equality between the individual[?] numbers. But suppose that from this full /maximum/ number of seven not one only but two Judges have been withdrawn by a call ab intra owing or not owing, ascribed or not ascribed, to indisposition. The number is thus reduced to five. Five is the minimum number allowed /permitted/ by the Lord Presidents learned Draughtsman to make a Quorum. In this case true it is that the superiorly learned Draughtsman of the Lord Chancellor has in lieu of the Quorum put a doubt. But for as much as the vibration of dubitation if it stops at any point must stop at some point, suppose it to stop at the point antecedently marked out for it by the learned Draughtsman of the Lord President: and that in conclusion five is the minimum number fixt upon for that purpose. Five being the minimum number comes now a call from the other Division, demanding a Judge from the impoverished Division that has not one to spare. Shall the call be obeyed, the business of the /this/ division thus called upon is put to stand: shall the call be disobeyed, the business of the division that made the call remains at a stand. It must be confessed however that in this case the difficulty produced by the inconvenience is not equal to the inconvenience that produced it: for by paying obedience to the call the business of the Division called upon is at a stand only for a time: whereas if the call be destroyed, the cessation of business may continue till the division receives its termination from the hand of death, the sovereign terminator of all divisions and remover of all difficulties.