2 Jan y 1808

Jurisdiction Table Table VII

Uses[?]

VI. Divisions of the field of jurisdiction grounded on the metaphysical or say logical, as contradistinguished from the topographical, principle of demarcation - third use?

This type, though not coming under the head of Appeals, is brought to view by the Table: exhibiting, as it does, the different scales of jurisdiction, that have place in the different divisions there marked out.

Inconveniences of this diversity are 1. complication; with its attendant evils, viz. uncertainty, and uncognoscibility on the part of the law: litigation, with its vexation and expence, the result of the undetermined[?] situation of the lines of demarcation supposed to be drawn between division and division.

Few of these divisions have at present any use. Those in which the advantage bids fairest for preponderating at present over the inconvenience seem to be the jurisdictions of the Spiritual lords, the Admiralty[?] Court, and the Privy Council: in the two latter instances, in respect of the necessity which the Executive power may occasionally be under, of consating[?] the temper of foreign powers or of the inhabitants of distant dependencies.

In some instances, the demarcation never had from the beginning any rational, nor any other than an historical cause: in others, where at

one time a rational cause existed, it has long ceased to exist.

English division into Common Law jurisdiction and Equity jurisdiction, a division not founded on nature, not produced by any rational cause, and peculiar to English jurisprudence. The historical cause was the [...?] of the original scheme of English judicature; an imperfection which rendered it necessary to call in the Roman law: English Judges, from stupidity and disregard to the ends of justice, being central[?] to render themselves instruments in the hand of a wrongdoer, as well as to permitt the most grievous wrongs to remain without a remedy. The distinction purely arbitrary: Equity causes being such and such only, to which the Roman mode of procedure happens to have been applied. Extend the application of this mode[?], you extend Equity: narrow it, you narrow Equity: abolish it, you abolish Equity