29 Feb y 1808

on L d Eldon's Bill

Letter V

'.4 Reasons not impracticable

The cause /case/ is - that the regulations necessary to be made for the distribution of rights of property, the creation and distribution of other private rights, and the prevention or reparation of private wrongs, being regulations necessary to the very existence of political society, in its earliest stages, came to be made before the establishment /formation/ of any distinct authority, habitually occupied in the business of legislation: came to be made therefore by the hands of Judges, operating as such, and thence in the ex post facto mode of jurisprudential law: fee-fed Judges, who being thus allowed to give themselves an interest opposite to that of the community made a pact[?] at accordingly an object of constant endeavours to exclude the light of reason as completely as possible from the regions of law, that they might be the better at liberty to organise a chaos replete with the grossest and most mischievous absurdities.