[clx. 221]

1821. May 3 d.

First Lines

Procedure

Suppose such these abovementioned arangements carried into any thing like compleat effect, the difference /obliteration/ between a limited and an absolute Monarchy is thereby, as to all beneficial purposes that are so to the subject many, compleatly obliterated /performed/. Understand, to all purposes beneficial to the people: for, as to purposes detrimental to the people /subject many/, the consequence does not absolutely follow: for, by means of the /those/ forms of limited monarchy which may remain after the essence has vanished /been obliterated/, more of the substance /subsistence/ of the people may perhaps be squeezed out of them under the once limited monarchy, than under the originally absolute one.

Of these weaknesses in the system of Judicial Procedure, the following may serve as examples:

1. Weaknesses in the law respecting /of/ Evidence: in a penal case, exclusion put upon the testimony of a Dependant if extracted by interrogation: as if, in this way, any more than in any other, there were in existence any human being less inclined to do injury to a man than the man himself is, or less likely so to do:

2. Weaknesses produced in the Law of Procedure by the principle and practice of nullificaton: the effect of proof of delinquency taken away by circumstances that have nothing to do with the question as between delinquency and non-delinquency: a mistake, real or supposed, on the part of this or that scribe employed in the prosecution

3. negligence