29 Oct r 1807

L d Eldon's Bill

'.14

The Presiding Judge

To collect what possible light may be to be thrown upon this darkness, we must resort once more to the Lord President's Bill. The draughtsman always knows what he is about: which is what the Lord Chancellor's scarce ever does.

In the Lord President's Bill we shall indeed see symptoms of fissure and re-union, but that fissure /but the operation/ without an object is in the other case. Here as elsewhere whatsoever is /be to be/ done, nothing is to be done without the Lord President. If in the business of "regulating matters relative to interim possession, execution, and costs," it be agreable to the Lord President that any thing should be done, he attends, and it is done: if it be more agreable to him that nothing should be done, he forbears to attend, and nothing can be done. If "the Chamber in which from which the cause originally came" be the Chamber which has the Lord President for its presiding Judge /President/, so far so good /it is as well/, the Lord President has it that way: if it be the other Chamber, then it is to be laid not only before that Chamber, but in the first place before the Lord President - "before the Lord President, and the Chamber from which the cause originally came: and so the Lord President has it that way.

In the Lord President's Bill the Lord Chancellor's draughtsman saw his groundwork and his instructions: but in /on/ this point as on so many others we see how he has floundered and blundered. In the hands of the Lord President's draughtsman the clause answered the Lord President's Draughtsman's purpose: in the hands of the Lord Chancellor's Draughtsman it answers no purpose at all. Instead of the Lord President and he /him/ alone, the Presiding Judge may be the Lord President or the Lord Justice Clerk, or any other Judge who by election "presides" "in the Division to which the case belongs," or "sits at the head of it."

Here then, is the ambition of the Lord President's draughtsman defeated, and to all appearance by a blunder. But this being but one of his points, and to appearance one of the least important, leaving more loss than to gain by explanations, he leaves the matter to take its course.