27 Feb y 1808

Scotch Reform on L d Eldons Bill

Letter V

I. Reasons necessary

Thus much as to the effects of the proposed Chamber of Review in respect of augmentation of delay, vexation and expence with its attendant inconveniences, relation had to class of the malâ fide suitor: the encouragement enormous: the supposed and proposed discouragement or preventatives - viz. extra costs at the Lords - prohibition of appeals to the Lords against interlocutors - and Appeals to Session instead of Bills of Advocation or Suspension - nominal, illusory and at bottom scarcely capable of having been sincerely intended to answer their professed purpose.

I come now in the last place to consider the effects of the same engine of delay, with these its supposed counter-forces, upon the case of the bonâ fide suitor.

Tending with the degree of force that has been seen to produce factitious delay without limit in the case of the one description of suitors, it would be sufficient to Ground a warrant of rejection if it had no tendency - or even if it had no proportionable tendency to diminish the quantity of delay produced by appeals to the Lords on the part of bonâ fide suitors.

From the former page

9. Whatever good effects are producible in this way by the publicity of the Debates are confined almost compleatly altogether to the stages that precede the passing of the law. For the interpretation of an Act of Parliament, neither Judge nor Advocate ever thought or would ever be likely to think, of referring to any Report given of any Debate of which it had been the subject in its passage through either House.

Back to the former page.