JB/119/008/004

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A View of the Hard-Labour Bill.

should hinder him? Is he the less qualified for making
himself understood & rememberd by being a legislator?
If he did then as he might do, expositions would be useless
and abridgements wou'd be impracticable. But does he?
— consult the 12 immense volumes of Acts of Parliament;
to which another is in the way to add itself every three
years.

Let me not all this while be understood to reflect
To the Printer
Begin a fresh paragraph
censure on a great master of language, on whom nothing
less than censure is intended. Had custom (that is the
law of Parliament) left him at liberty to follow the
dictates of his own intelligence, little or nothing I suppose
would have been left to any one else to add to it on the
score of perspicuity: if (supposing the Bill and the Preface
do come as they purport to do from the same hand) it be
reasonable to judge of what he could have done from what
he has done. On this head, I have scare any an idea
of making any greater improvement in his draught
than what he could have made if he had pleased, and
would if he had though proper. He thought, I suppose
(if it occurred to him to propose the subject to his thoughts
that one plan or reformation was enough to proceed upon
at once. On the present occasion his business was, to
reform a part of the system of punishment adopted by
our Legislature; not to go about reforming the Legislative
stile. He has therefore of course conformed in a great measure
to the stile in use (though with a considerable defacation
from the usual complement of tautologies and
redundancies) his publication being a draught of the

Identifier: | JB/119/008/004 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 119.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	119	Main Headings	panopticon
Folio number	008	Info in main headings field	preface a view of the hard-labour bill
Image	004	Titles	note
Category	copy/fair copy sheet	Number of Pages	4
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f1 / f2 / f3 / f4
Penner		Watermarks	[[watermarks::r williams [britannia with shield emblem]]]
Marginals		Paper Producer	c. hamilton
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	39519
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