11 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

After Ch. │ │ Advantages

Ch. │ │ L d Hale's Plan

By the same circumstance we are led to two other lamentable /outrageous/ defects in the plan of the learned and venerable, and even on this occasion indubitably well-meaning Judge. They stand not indeed upon the face of it: but they are not the less irremovably /incurably/ inherent in it.

According to time[?], as we have seen, the constitution goes to wreck and ruin: unless whatsoever other appeals there be, there be one in "dernier resort, to the true supreme Court, the high Court of Parliament, consisting of Kings, Lords and Commons."

But in the belly of this one preposition, and without a speculum ventres[?], may be seen two mischiefs the least of which might of itself be sufficient to oppose to his plan a peremptory negative.

1. One is that this erects an additional stage of appeal: whence it follows that his proposed Court of Appeal, not being competent to put an end to the cause, is useless: and being a mere manufactury of delay, vexation and expence, is by so much worse than useless. Here then (to use his own words) is "it may be a long and expensive suit for the obtaining of a decree or judgment, (and possibly all the substance of a man's self and his family or some purchaser for valuable consideration are laid upon it)" made by so "much the longer and more expensive." By the consideration of this effect, though he would not deny the existence of it his affections, it could not be expected, should be proportionably moved: for the persons produced by it would be his learned and revered brethren sitting with at least as much " regularity" as well as handsome decorum and dignity as in either of the Exchequer Chambers, in either of which does either the delay or the expence or both together appear to have given birth to any troublesome emotions in his learned breast: when by the contemplation of those evils any of the unpleasant symptoms were produced, it was when the whole course of delay and expence represented itself to his fancy as receiving its termination in a Court the population of which was in the greatest part composed of noble indeed as also of right reverend but not the less unlearned Judges.