27 June 1807

+ Contents p.7

(3) (1)

Note continued

Letter V

II. Litigation

II. Def t. malâ fide

The difficulties /obstacles/ of reducing the value of satisfaction in the /in [...?]/

Such so far as magnitude is concerned are the difficulties which Judge and C o in their exertions to the keeping down the value of satisfaction had to cope with: [in] spite of these difficulties their success has been greater than could readily have been imagined.

In the case of an immoveable where the wrong consists in the withholding of some article of property belonging to that principal class, say an acre of land or a house, and the satisfaction, viz. the main part of it consists in the restitution of the land or of the house, no great matter was to be done: where a whole house or a whole acre of land, in virtue of the disposition of the main body of the law, is what the plaintiff is entitled to receive, it would have been too difficult by any to have framed any such rule of law (understood in the shape of jurisprudential law) as should declare that half an acre or half the house is all that he shall receive.

So again in the case of an article of moveable property in any shape, suppose a horse, it would have been too much by any rule of law to have said, whoever is entitled by law to a horse, viz. a whole horse, shall receive from law, (viz. from the main defendant who has unlawfully taken the horse, no more than half the horse, or three quarters of it.