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☞ For Official Aptitude?
1828. April 6.
Peel's Jury packing.
☞ Eliminated this page from Parcus Letter III at the suggestion of J.B. May it
not form eventually the matter of a separate Letter?
I know not whether, after these exposures, any
so trifling an exposure such comparatively inconsiderable a one may be found worth making
as that of the practice of Jury packing, established by
Mr. Peel in one of his Acts, on pretence of abolishing
it; thereby, converting into an instrument of tyranny,
what in profession is a check upon it, the only check
the people have in their own hands. Not to speak of Sir
Richard Philips, to whom the merit of orginating
the exposure is unquestionably due, Mr. Bentham, the
only man who ever did justice to the Knight, had
employed a volume in compleating it. This poisonous
and tyranny-establishing period, which it had thus
cost two volumes to expose, Mr. Surface Peel has made
triumphant, at the expense of two or three a few lines.
Burthen to one class – burthen in the shape of Jury
Service is, by this act of his aggravated; and while & whatever
security was derived, or made supposed to be derived, from this source, by all classes, destroyed.
The fraud Mr. Surface has been told of: told of, in the
manner as gave him the option of saving himself
from the exposure. This fraud is the absolutist has refused to give
up the benefit of: he has refused to propose any emolument
of the law.
Of no small power in the character
of an instrument of elucidation, is contrast.
In regard to Law Reform, I have shown you, Sir,
what the plans of Mr. Surface Peels are. One of these
days, perhaps, should it be agreeable to you to give
currency to them, I may attempt to convey to you
some conceptions – a widely incompleat and proportionably
inadequate as best it can not but be – of
what, in relation to that this same subject, Mr. Jeremy
Bentham's are. To the list of the practical "wise and
prudent Gentlemans" plans, might have been added
that for keeping under the bushel the light of the abstract,
theoretical and speculative Gentleman's plans. With
that light, the eyes of the practical Gentleman have,
you may remember, declared themselves not altogether
unacquainted: and sore, in no common degree, have
they been made by it. But this, if at all, must come in a separate address from Parcus.
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official aptitude |
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for official aptitude? peel's jury-packing |
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john flowerdew colls |
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[[notes_public::"eliminated this page from […?] letter at the suggestion of j. bo and forms eventually the matter of a separate letter?" [note in bentham's hand]]] |
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