23 Dec r 1806

Scotch Reform To L d Grenville

Resolut. 6

Jury

But the mode of collecting evidence employed in Trial by Jury surely you will not dispute its matchless excellence - Not I, indeed, my Lord: no man more forward to proclaim it. It is for Lord Erskine to dispute it, who since he has been Lord Erskine /Chancellor/ has taken his final leave of it, and who does not do much as cause[?] it to be and in one cause out of twenty. It is for Lord Elenborough to dispute it, who except when the presence of a Jury renders it impossible to exclude it, never employs it in any instance whatsoever. Should they reply, as doubtless if questioned they would reply that what they do is what they stand bound to do by the practice of their predecessors, the individuals will /may/ stand exculpated by the observation, but the practice will not be bettered by it.

But a Jury, my Lord? - what connection is there between the authority given to /use made of/ a tribunal composed of a set of ephemerous[?] /impermanent/ Judges, subject to veneration, and the use of this best[?] mode of collecting evidence? Non but what is purely accident, easily separable, and in such an /a mass/ of instances in number extent and importance such as your Lordship has already seen, actually separated.

In fine /a word/ what is the mode of evidence thus employed, but the natural, the domestic mode, preserved or restored? with this difference that in family judicature as well as every where else where truth is the real object, no testimony is excluded, whereas in Jury trial, under a chaos of contradiction composed of exclusions and admissions the light of evidence being shut out, misdecision and failure of justice are thus necessitated in a thousand instances, by the interested, and perpetually self-contradicting sophistry of lawyers.