24 Dec r 1807

Scotch Reform

4[?]

Letter V

Ch. │ │ Omission Causes

Were the ends of justice, and its subserviency to those ends the objects really in view, the true criterion and index of judicature absolutely considered so far as Appeals are concerned - the number presented respectively from the supreme local judicatory: relatively and comparatively considered it would be the numbers respectively presented from the several co-ordinate local judicatories in the three kingdoms: whether, after passing from their respective subordinate judicatories, the supreme judicatory to which the Appeals respectively went, even of this or that description - whether to the House of Lord for example or to the King, would to this point make no material difference.

But the ends pursued by our most venerable and justly predominant order never have been, nor in the nature of the case could have been, the ends of justice, nor could those ends have ever been the objects of our attention for any other purpose than that of enabling ourselves to steer as clear and wide of them as possible.

By bringing to view the real number of Appeals presented from the English Courts in question we not only should not promote any of the laudable ends and designs we have in view, but we should counteract in the strongest and even frustrate them in the compleatest degree imaginable. For so it is, that it would turn out, not only that the Appeals from the English Court are more numerous than the Appeals from the Scotch Courts; but that the excess is beyond all proportion greater than what would be in proportion to the difference in point of population between the two kingdoms.