[094-287v]

4 Feb y 1807

Letter

[...?] 6.7.8.9 Juries

I come now to distribute out lots the aggregate number of causes whatever it may be that the country my be expected to afford, classing them with a view to their aptitude for being subjected to this mode of judicature /decision/ in the first instance.

1. In the first class come undisputed causes: if these would /are and[?]/ under every system be comprized a vast majority of the whole number of causes commenced out of every 100, say │ │.

In all these instances Jury trial is compleatly useless: there being nothing for the Jury to do.

But being useless, it is a great deal more than being useless.

1. Factitious and useless delay, vexation and expence to the parties. And note, that though of the delay vexation and expence with which Jury trial is under the existing system circumstanced, by far the greater part is factitious and consequently removable, yet of each there is no inconsiderable part that is natural and unremovable.

2. Vexation to the Jurors. [...?] the Judge by whom they are to be directed /permanent official under whose direction they are to be placed/, here are 12 men whose time is occupied to no purpose whose time and with it their means of livelyhood is forced from them to no purpose. Superstition alone it is [...?] blind superstition, can cling to /[...?] for/ this large number as indispensable: as being of the [...?] of the institution: but reduce it to its [...?] here will always be a considerable number of heads of families on whom this burthen is and would be to be imposed: a burthen by no means light, even in a town: proportionably living[?] in the country and that as in so large a proportion of the territory of Scotland a thinly peopled one.