7 Dec r 1807

Scotch Reform 11

6

Letter V

Litigation promoted

§.2. General Directions

5. Between the production of wrongs, and the production of suits the connection being thus intimate, and in a practical view inseparably connected, it will scarcely be worth your while to trouble yourself with the distinction. In regard to articles of this sort the course you have to take is the plain straight forward one: which is to give them whatsoever encouragement is in your power, with no other attention than that of giving the preference to the sort called civil ones. Multiplying wrongs, you increase the quantity of the seed: multiplying suits, so they be of the productive sort, you increase the harvest.

6. Thus Your system of management has two main branches:

1. the manufacture of wrongs and suits: 2. turning to the best account each suit so made.

7. With a view to both branches, as being applicable to both branches, one general instruction may be of use to you: which is - never lose sight of the ends of justice. These ends cannot in the avoidance, prevention or cure of so many opposite and corresponding evils: and in particular the evils of factitious delay, vexation and expence in which latter your own profit is excluded. Between these evils so intimate is the connection, that there is scarce one of them that you can produce, without producing, if not a certainty, a chance not to be despised, of that which in the shape of profit comes into your pocket: so that in this case, without troubling your head with niceties, the plain and straight forward rule for you to pursue is - to lose no convenient opportunity of giving rise or increase to any of these evils.