PRIVATE

15 March 1807

Omitt? A Omitt?

10

Letter V

1. Plan

Ingratitude is so much worse than witchcraft, that I would not willingly impute it to any man, much less a learned Gentleman who has been thus distinguished and dignified by Your Lordship's notice. And yet on this as on so many other occasions I know not how to avoid accusing him of it.

In the malâ fide suitor Your Lordship's learned Reformer like every other learned Gentleman, might, if he could but persuade himself to open his eyes, and look before him, see in every point of view his best customer. Yet so it is, that from first to last, he knows of no such person, he never saw him in his life. Plunged by practice in the dregs of Brute /Torgas[?]/ and Romulus, the purity of his mind has confined him in idea to Utopia, where there are no suitors but bonâ fide ones.

Thus it is in regard to the relief held out against the burthens of the Bill-Chamber: liberty, not obligation of refuge to a less dilatory, less vexatious, less expensive plan of judicature for such I find no difficult in supposing it - appeal to Session as now to the Justiciary Court.

To the bonâ fide suitor, if such be his good fortune to be honestly advised {to be advised to receive advice fraught with impotent learning and with more honesty than that which seems to have fallen to Your Lordship's share} to the bonâ fide suitor were it his lot to come in for a share of it, a very advantageous substitute, a very comfortable relief. His purpose it will suit no doubt. But the malâ fide suitor, how will it suit his purpose? how will his design be forwarded by it: and when they are not, where is the probability, where the moral possibility of his betaking himself to it - that is of his allowing his injured adversaries the benefit of it.