18 Feb y 1808

on L d Eldons Bill

Letter V

II. Eldons & J.B.'s course

in a state fit to receive the touch of the legislators sceptre

As to extent, the powers /field/ of subordinate legislation would hardly have gone /stretched/ beyond that of the regulations proposed to receive an immediate sanction from the authority of Parliament: and accordingly in respect of their object and their nature those powers would have been confined to the giving by means of regulations of detail, effect and execution to such general principles and rules as could not at this distance from the scene of action be put into a shape compleatly fitted for practice without the aid of such regulations of an expository nature as the judicial authority would alone be competent to frame /to the framing of/ in terminis: not seeing any sufficient reason why, out of /beyond/ that line, the initiative authority should swell into definitive power in the instance of these judicial hands, any more than in the instance of those of a set of Commissioners selected for the exercise of an authority directed expressly to the purpose of legislation.

Under the same or a separate head would have come in the last place, such powers, if any, as ex majors[?] cantata[?], it might have appeared advisable to invest them with, for suspending the execution of this or that one of the number /set/ of regulations proposed to be established instanter by the immediate authority of Parliament.

The need and demand for these powers would of course depend on the subject matter and nature of such proposed Parliamentary regulations.

But any rate the object they would be directed to and confined to /limited by/ - would be the prevention of irreparable damage: meaning such irreparable damage, if any, as might result from the execution of the regulations so established by the immediate authority of Parliament.