11 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

After Ch.│ │ Hale's Plan

Ch.│ │ Hale's Objection

Here however, and without it being necessary for him any more than prudent and consistent to travel any further, here was at any rate a manifest and apparently formidable danger attached to /mischief liable to result from/ the ultimately appellate jurisdiction of /of possessed by/ the House of Lords. Almost a century and a half has elapsed, and not a particle of the mischief which to his eyes appeared so formidable, has ever taken place.

From this experience however, so great have been the intervening changes - changes which at the time of day it lay not in human sagacity to foresee - no just conclusion can be drawn in[?] the prejudice of the evidence /justness/ of his views /fears/. To judge of /From a just judgment on/ the soundness of his /this/ argument we must once more put ourselves in his place.

Immediate jurisdiction as well as ultimately appellate were at the time at /in/ which he wrote, both of them excused as well as claimed by the House of Lords. So different from each other were the two species of jurisdiction - so different as well in respect of present /immediate/ effects as in respect of future /distant/ danger that on this occasion his first operation should have been the pointing out the distinctions and drawing a clear and strong line accordingly. This /But this is what/ he has not done. True it is that in speaking of the danger the appellate jurisdiction is the only one of the two he touches upon. But of the other which was equally claimed and exercised, he says nothing: and yet it was beyond comparison more formidable. To the ultimately appellate judicatory of the House of Lords no other causes could be brought /presented/, than the comparatively few that had then already travelled through the antecedent stage or stages: to the immediate judicatory as many causes might be brought except in so far as prevented by expence as were it not for this all-terminating as well as all-accepting judicatory would have gone except in so far as prevented by expence to all the other inferior Courts put together.