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9 June 1808
The qualities of sensibility and uprightness being
thus necessary to Jurymen, one mode at least there is
by which, according to him the possession of those qualities
might be secured to them still more effectually
than that of crop and fule.
"Sensible and upright" (not to speak of other
qualities of a so much higher form part) the
Judges are, all of them, to a man: they never have
been nor ever can be, any of them, any thing less.
But these are chosen, not by Fortune, but by a still
more discerning judge, the King: and if aristocracy
be a prison, here is monarchy for the antidote.
But All this while Scotland, not England, is on this the present occasion
the country principally to be regarded principal object of regard: and in Scotland
let us observe, how this conception notion of this his
absolute governments presents as a step towards this
oppression every judicatory, even if so low a level as
that of a Court of conscience, if to the cognizance of
the question of law, such judicatory adds that of the
question of fact.
In the Court of Session the highest local judicatory
in Scotland the question of fact and that of law are
without distinction decided upon by the same Judges: and so likewise in Scotch
causes, in the highest imperial judicatory, the House
of Lords.
With the Court of Session, in the character of a Court
for the dispatch of business, I am no more satisfied than the
Faculty of Advocates are: nor with the House of Lords, in that
same character, desire the noble and learned director of its proceedings
whose discernment
presents to him at
each occasion the same view the
magnitude of the every mischief
and the impossibility
of all remedy.
But as
to the British Governments
being either the most oppressive of absolute governments, or in a way to be so
it is a prospect with which my eyes have never yet had the misfortune to be afflicted.
Identifier: | JB/035/291/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 35.
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1808-06-09 |
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035 |
constitutional code; evidence; procedure code |
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291 |
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001 |
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text sheet |
1 |
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recto |
e12 |
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jeremy bentham |
th 1806 |
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andre morellet |
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1806 |
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10884 |
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