23 Dec r 1806

Scotch Reform To L d Grenville

Resolut.6

Jury

Trial by Jury is Trial with Lawyers: love[?] of Juries, love[?] of Jus.

My Lord, with submission, the most unexceptionable part of the Resolution is the exception at the end of it: "except in such cases as it shall be found proper to except from this rule."

My Lord, in the mouths of the learned adorers /amators// enamorator/ of Jury Trial, it has not been /in general at least/ my fortune to observe any exceptions made: neither in favour of these cases in which they might give it if they would /might have given it, but would not,/ nor in favour of them in which they could not give it, if they would ever [...?], excepting only what is excepted, viz: the privilege of paying them their fees for it, without having it.

This latter class of cases, my Lord, is not a scanty one: Take for example, what, if the Newspaper is correct I see happened but t'other day: in one Court in the day light causes, all of them special[?] Jury causes, all sent off to arbitration - not one of them tried. Why not tried? - because in its own nature physically incapable of being tried - the Jury incapable of sitting to hear them out without separating, and so ceasing to be a Jury.

Where a suit comes to be to a certain degree complex trying it as a suit /cause/ ought to be tried, or else trying it at all becomes physically impossible, /of this description for example are a considerable part of the causes which come before an English Court of Equity./ but I will not attempt to detain your Lordship on this subject any longer if the circumstances which may conspire to place a cause in this predicament I have given a synoptic /simultaneous[?]/ view in a Table.

I won't try this cause: Do you think I will try such a cause as this? How often have I not heard this said, and said with propriety, by Lord Mansfield!