24 April 1808

Reasons for the Work

Thus the imperfections in the English System, though so much better than the Scotch.

5. By an exertion of power, causeless upon the face of it the defendant is in general placed in that distressing condition, by means of the instrument called a writ, without the plaintiff's having given in any designation of the efficient cause of his supposed right to the service demanded at the charge of the defendant, and even without any designation given so much as of the nature of that service. For anterior to the Enforcement of demand called the Declaration comes the Writ

(a): an order signed by the Judge, which gives no designation other than a false one of its own object, but of which the effect is to compel the defendant, on pain of an indefinable mass of punishment, to employ an Attorney to go through the form of litigation in his, the Defendant's name, and at his expence.

The consequence is that it is just as easy for a man to commence one action without right as with right: to employ the hand of justice for the purpose of oppression, or extortion, or for the ruin of rival prosperity, as for the giving effect to his own just rights, or for the procuring due satisfaction for a wrong which he has sustained. To p. 5

From p. 6

9. With all these imperfections under the English system of pleading there exists a mass of cases, and to a vast extent, to which the regular and established forms do not extend. Under this description comes all cases which admitt of the sort of pleading called Special Pleadings.

10. So all cases in which the service demanded by the plaintiff is not rendered by any other sort of judicatory than without the assistance of a Court of Equity.

12. Not to speak of the cases which are understood to belong to the jurisdiction of the judicatories called Spiritual Courts.

13 - and to judicatories called Admiralty Courts,

11. So in the various species of Motive Causes: in which the cause takes its commencement in a speech made by an Advocate in open Court, grounded on evidence delivered in the shape of Affidavit evidence.

(a) This supposes the Writ to be of the kind called judicial, as it is in most instances.