[094-342v]

3 Feb y 1807

Letter V

Refusal[?] 1.2.3.4

Sitting in a Court of Natural Procedure, be the Judge of what rank he may, real Sheriff[?] [...?], or imagining volunteer Lord of Session, I am sensible how awkwardly he could not but feel the business sitting on him, for some time. Sitting before him, along with, or (Oh horrible!) instead of, learned friends and companions, fellow-servants with himself[?], arrayed in the accustomed [...?] of posture[?] - seeing before him a sort of savages, called parties or suitors, talking nothing better than common sense, without he would not know form or learning, what to do with them, or what to make of them. He would feel himself in the situation of a tyro, after all his experience.

But when a man is in [...?], difficulties fly before him. Various schools, various [...?], themselves. There are the Small-Debt Courts let him take for his [...?] some intelligent Country Gentlemen used to act, in a character of a Justice of the Peace, in one of these Courts. There is his own Nursery, and his own Lady's dressing room: of her own Ladyship let him take[?] a lecture, and observe, how in the management of her own children and her own servants, she contrives, and without summaries or [...?], or parabasis[?] or protestation.

She contrives to administer justice: or if[?] no source of instruction will serve but English, let him get M r. Hutton amusing and interesting as well as instruction account of the practice of the Courts of Conscience, as exemplified at Birmingham, or if the injurious author be still in the land of the living, let him make a pilgrimage to that sort of industry, and take his lesson vivâ voce. M r. Hutton, by his book, be a man of honour, the learned pupil giving[?] one[?] such errand, need not fear being quizzed by law[?], as Lord Swinton[?] was by the grave and learned Judge.