10 Dec r 1807

Scotch Reform

Letter V

Ch.2. Utility

§.1. against local influences

In this state of things, suppose for argument's sake it were referred to the Scotch Peerage - to a body consisting of persons whose faculty of exercising a sinister influence on the decisions of the supreme local judicatory might well be supposed to be at its maximum - suppose it were even referred to a body so composed to give a determination on the question whether to return or not the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords over the Scottish judicatories, my expectation would be to find the answer in the affirmative.

To pursue the fiction, suppose at the very time any one of these noble referees actually exercising a sinister influence over the supreme local judicatory, and making his profit of that influence, I should not expect to find even his vote on the negative side. On the particular occasion in question it so happens that he is in a condition to derive and advantage from the disorder raging in that judicatory: but in an indefinable number of future contingent occasions it might operate to his disadvantage: prudence therefore, even the most selfish prudence, would recommend to him to prefer that security, to which unshaken probity on the part of the judicial establishment is necessary, to the precarious chance of suffering instead of losing by the opposite vice.