10/11/ Dec r 1807

Scotch Reform

Letter V

Ch.2. Utility

§.2. for constitutional obedience

In all countries the judicial authority has of course been more or less in the habit of disobeying the mandates of the legislature. Cases of disobedience more determinately wilful, and which the impossibility of honest misconception is more compleat, can neither exist nor be conceived than what have been realized, and even continue to be exemplified, by English Judges as towards the declared will of Parliament: and in Scotland still greater liberties have been taken by the supreme judicial Court with the authority of the supreme legislature, than in England.

But if such be the contempt put upon the authority of the legislature under and notwithstanding the superordinate judicature exercised by one of the three branches of the legislature, to what a pitch might it not be expected to soar, supposing that check removed.