17 July 1807

Scotch Reform

21

2 o

Letter V

IV. Bonâ fide Appeals

To make up the intended number of Judges, viz. 5. in addition to this fourth Judge of whom thus much is known as above, that he is not so likely to understand the business as any of those whose Judgments it is intended he should overrule, comes another of whom, except what must be predicated as above of the Lord Chief Baron nothing more can be predicated, except that which can not but be predicated, viz. that he must be an extraordinary Lord: and to this extraordinary Lord is given a degree of influence by which all the other Lords that are not extraordinary are thrown as it were into the back ground: viz. that which attaches itself of course to the situation of President. What manner of person he is to be is not said: but be he who he may, he is to preside in the same way and manner as the Chancellor of Scotland did preside in the Court of Session by the Constitution of the said Court as enacted by the said Act of the fifth Parliament of James the fifth: that is to say he is to have and exercise not the same sort of power and authority as the President of a Court of Judicature exercises every where else of course; but a particular sort of power for which at the expence of unlearned litigants learned persons are sent to grope in a room without records in it, or what is worse full of half unintelligible, half contradictory records in it, by the light of a rush light, and that carefully covered up under a bushel by the wisdom of ages.