2 May 1807

 After Juries or Justices[?] to be inserted

[Insert Table]

Affirmed Reversed Remitted Withdrawn Dismissed

1st Period 58 25 4 46 28 38 88 152

2nd Perios 51 13 11 42 36 15 64 109

109 38 15 88 64 53 152 261

[End of Table]

E1 (4) (1)

Letter V

Ch.12. Appeal list mutilated

§.5. Execution - stoppage

injustice amount

In a former part of this letter I saw occasion to remark the inconsistency in not trusting to the highest local judicature in Scotland with the power of giving provisional effect to their judgment, notwithstanding Appeal, subject to the obligation of taking whatsoever arrangements might be necessary, according to the nature of the case from preserving such execution from the mishap of having become, in case of reversal, the instrument of irreparable damage.

Imperfect as they are, the documents already furnished as above, are sufficient to place in the strongest as well as clearest light, the relative amount as well as the existence of the mass of injustice of which this incongruity has been productive.

In the two periods, making together 14 years, judgments of the Court of Session, reversed on appeal or modified (viz. or remitted) 53: neither reversed nor modified, but the appeals either withdrawn or dismissed for want of being prosecuted, 261: within a trifle 5 to 1. But in every instance in which the judgment was in the Court above deemed so decidedly correct as neither to be reversed nor modified, so long as execution was stopped by the appeal, so long and as to so much was injustice done: 5 instances in which injustice was done by the stoppage, for every one in which it was saved: not that in this one injustice need have been done, or in the common course of things would have been done, had the powers necessary to the prevention of it been given as above.