[094-159v]

21 Jan y 1808

L d Eldons Bill

3. To another set of Commissioners is attributed /committed/ the doings of enquiring into and reporting upon the expediency, and eventually the mode, of engrafting Jury Trial onto the Scottish system of procedure in civil: Then I call the Great Seat Commissioners.

The part which stands first is that which occupies itself in the establishment of regulations outright: regulations to take effect immediately by authority of Parliament.

But observing that the effect of it is liable to be modified, and the design in an word[?] counteracted, by the regulations which the Court of Session are [...?] to make, I shall take the liberty of so far changing the order of the matters as to take first into consideration the part which occupies itself in buying[?] a foundation as above for regulations to be framed in future.

The whole number of Judges, at present 15 to be divided into two sections eight in one, seven in the other: in the eight-seated section the Lord President of the whole Court to preside; in the seven-seated, the Lord Justice Clerk: each section to contain an equal number of the Judges of the Court of Justitiary, reckoning the Lord Justice Clerk as two. This forms the principal matter of the [...?] first section of the Bill. Section 6 th gives to each of those two sections, except as excepted the powers, duties and functions of the whole: section 7 th undertakes to appoint for each section a quorum number, two finding the task not quite so easy perhaps as at first [...?],