30 April 1808

J.B. to H of Commons

I. Reasons for the Work

§ English pleadings inapplicable to Scotland

 Make this, & the last, shorter & lighter

7. What in a case of this description the law will not do for a man is the securing to him the use or possession of any one thing which by[?] common speech he calls his own. What it does, or at least profess to do for him, is to give him a sum of money instead of its leaving to the wrongdoer the choice as between the money and the thing.

8. II. Delivery of an individual thing of the class of things immoveable.

For administering satisfaction in this shape for wrong in this shape, the law does not refuse his service. But as to any such descriptions of the subject matter of this service, the quantity and situation of the portion of land, for example, which the Defendant is expected to deliver to the plaintiff, no tolerably compleat or correct description is ever required to be given. What is always required is a description: what is always undeniably true of the description is that it enormously and wantonly false.

9. III. Delivery of sufficient security for specific services of every description to be rendered by the defendant to the Plaintiff.

8. 3. Service on the part of the Judge consisting in the compelling [of] the Defendant to render a service of any kind to the Plaintiff.

Except in the cases to a very narrow extent in which this service is rendered by a Court of Equity, there is scarce one instance in which satisfaction in this shape is rendered by the law of England.

The proprietary interest, which men are capable of having in the infinitely diversified services which they are capable of receiving at each others hands, has as small a share in the protection of the law of England as the rights which, as above, they are capable of having in and to the use of things.

10. IV. The service which consists in causing the defendant to deliver at his own expence a sum of money to the plaintiff.

When the object of a man's demand is thus simple, the designation of it can not be matter of much difficulty: the quantum is the only circumstance in which falshood is capable of lodging itself.