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• Scotch Reform; Considered With Reference to the Plan Proposed In the Late Parliament, For the Regulation of the Courts and the Administration of Justice In Scotland: With Illustrations From English Non-reform: In the Course of Which, Divers Imperfectio
• Advertisement.
• Letters to Lord Grenville, On the Proposed Reform In the Administration of Civil Justice In Scotland.
• Letter I.
• Letter II.: Proposed Division of the Court of Session.
• Letter III.: Proposed System of Pleading.
• Letter IV.: Proposed Trial By Jury.
• Letter V.: On the Bill Called Lord Eldon’s.
• Summary View of the Plan of a Judicatory, Under the Name of the Court of Lords’ Delegates, Proposed For the Exercise of Those Judicial Functions, the Adequate Discharge of Which By the Whole House Has, For These Six Or Seven Years, Been Rendered Confe
• The Elements of the Art of Packing, As Applied to Special Juries, Particularly In Cases of Libel Law.
• Advertisement to the First Edition.
• Part I.
• Chapter I.: Occasion of This Work.
• Chapter II.: Juries—their Use As a Check to Judges.
• Chapter III.: The Check How Done Away By Influence.
• Chapter IV.: Special Juries, a Special Engine of Corruption.
• Chapter V.: Jury Unanimity Increases the Corruption.
• Chapter VI.: Purposes to Which Influence On Juries May Be Made Subservient.
• Chapter VII.: Chief Purpose, Crushing the Liberty of the Press.
• Chapter VIII.: The Exchequer Packing Office Suffices.
• Chapter IX.: Instruments For Crushing the Liberty of the Press.
• Chapter X.: Want of Adequate Obsequiousness Morally Impossible.
• Chapter XI.: Such Juries Worse Than None.
• Part II.: State of the Packing System, Anno 1808.
• Chapter I.: Introduction—two Reforming Shrievalties.
• Chapter II.: The Sheriff to the Lord Chief Baron—notices.
• Chapter III.: Lord Chief Baron to Sheriff Sir Richard Phillips—avowries and Defences.
• Chapter IV.: Observations On the Lord Chief Baron’s Defences.
• Chapter V.: Special Jury Corruption—devices By Which It Was Protected.
• Chapter VI.: Learned Advice From the Temple.
• Chapter VII.: Advice From Lincoln’s-inn.
• Chapter VIII.: Maxims Concerning Reform, Deduced From the Above Letter.
• Chapter IX.: Transactions At the Remembrancer’s.
• Part III.: State of the Packing System, Anno 1809.
• Chapter I.: Commons’ Debate, 24 Th April 1809. Packing and Cutting.
• Chapter II.: Double-fee Abuse, Plain and Embroidered.
• Part IV.—: Remedies Proposed. *
• Chapter I.: Humble Proposal For Restoring the Constitution In Regard to Juries.
• Chapter II.: State of Jury Package In Scotland.
• Chapter III.: Humble Proposal For Restoring the Authority of Parliament.
• “swear Not At All:” Containing an Exposure of the Needlessness and Mischievousness, As Well As Anti-christianity of the Ceremony of an Oath: a View of the Parliamentary Recognition of Its Needlessness, Implied In the Practice of Both Houses; a
• Advertisement.
• Editor’s Note
• Swear Not At All. Mat. V. 34.
• Section 1.: Oath. Incongruity of the Assumption, On Which Its Supposed Beneficial Efficiency Is Grounded.
• Section 2.: Mischievousness of This Instrument Considered In a General Point of View.
• Section 3.: Its Inefficiency In the Character of a Security Against Deceptious Incorrectness and Incompleteness In Evidence.
• Section 4.: Recognition of Its Inutility By Lords and Commons.
• Section 5.: Mischiefs —1. Contributing to the Mendacity-licence Granted By Judges.
• Section 6.: Mischief 2— Weakening In Various Ways the Efficiency of the Laws.
• Section 7.: Mischief 3— Bewildering and Enslaving the Consciences of Jurymen.
• Section 8.: Mischief 4— Giving Aid and Force to the Enterprises of Malefactors.
• Section 9.: Mischief 5— Furnishing Pretence For Misrule By Abuse of Prerogative.
• Section 10.: Misrule, How to Perpetuate—coronation Oaths Amended.
• Section 11.: Mischief 6— Corrupting the National Morals and Understanding—oxford University Oaths.
• Section 12.: Mischief 6 Continued. —ii. Cambridge Oaths.
• Section 13.: Practice of Receiving Judicial Oaths, Its Repugnancy to the Precepts of Jesus.
• Section 14.: Succedanea—true Securities Substitutible to This False One.
• Section 15.: Cause and Origin of the Practice In Regard to Oaths.
• Appendix.
• Truth Versus Ashhurst; Or, Law As It Is, Contrasted With What It Is Said to Be.
• The King Against Edmonds and Others: Set Down For Trial, At Warwick, On the 29 Th of March 1820.
• The King Against Sir Charles Wolseley, Baronet, and Joseph Harrison, Schoolmaster, Set Down For Trial, At Chester, On the 4 Th of April 1820.
• Official Aptitude Maximized; Expense Minimized: As Shown In the Several Papers Comprised In This Volume.
• Paper I.—
• Paper II.—: Introductory View, &c.
• Paper III.—: Extract From the Proposed Constitutional Code; Entitled, Official Aptitude Maximized—expense Minimized. By Jeremy Bentham, Esq. Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn.
• Paper IV.—: Supplement to the Above Extract.
• Paper V.—: Defence of Economy Against the Right Honourable Edmund Burke.
• Paper VI.—: Defence of Economy Against the Right Honourable George Rose.
• Paper VII.: Observations On Mr. Secretary Peel’s House of Commons Speech, 21 St March 1825, Introducing His Police Magistrates’ Salary Raising Bill, ( Date of Order For Printing, 24 Th March 1825.)
• Paper VIII.: Indications Respecting Lord Eldon, Including History of the Pending Judges’-salary-raising Measure.
• Paper IX.—: On the Militia.
• Paper X.: On Public Account Keeping.
• Paper XI.: Constitutional Code—table of Contents As Shown By Titles of Chapter and Sections.
• Commentary On Mr. Humphreys’ Real Property Code, By Jeremy Bentham. From the Westminster Review, No. XII., For October 1826.
• *∗* the Following Note Was Prefixed to the Article By the Editor of the Westminster Review: —
• Commentary On Humphreys’ Real Property Code.
• I.: Deed of Sale.
• II.: Deed of Mortgage. 1
• III.: Marriage Settlement Deed.
• Outline of a Plan of a General Register of Real Property: Contained In a Communication to the Commissioners Appointed Under Letters Patent, of Date the 6 Th June 1828, to Inquire Into the Law of England Respecting Real Property, and First Printed I
• Justice and Codification Petitions: Being Forms Proposed For Signature By All Persons Whose Desire It Is to See Justice No Longer Sold, Delayed, Or Denied: and to Obtain a Possibility of That Knowledge of the Law, In Proportion to the Want of Which T
• Justice and Codification Petitions.
• Advertisement.
• Preliminary Explanations Necessary to Be First Read.
• Petition For Justice.
• Abridged Petition For Justice.
• More Abridged Petition For Justice.
• Supplement, Which May Be Added Or Not to Any One of the Three Or Any Other Proposed Petition.
• Petition For Codification.
• Lord Brougham Displayed: Including I. Boa Constrictor, Alias Helluo Curiarum; II. Observations On the Bankruptcy Court Bill, Now Ripened Into an Act; III. Extracts From Proposed Constitutional Code.

CHAPTER X.

WANT OF ADEQUATE OBSEQUIOUSNESS MORALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

§ 1.

Obsequiousness found unavoidable by a veteran Advocate.

In any published written discourse, taking for its subject the propriety of public measures, or of the conduct of public men, whatever merits disapprobation, presents an adequate demand for punishment. This principle being either expressly laid down or assumed, and juries habituated to accede to it, and act in conformity to it, it seems not very easy to conceive what that published discourse can be, to which, if written on any such subject as that in question, a jury, even though it were not a draught from the select and secret qualified list, would, on any tolerable ground of probability, be expected to refuse to attach a verdict of conviction. Yes: if so it be that, in the alleged libel that lies before them, there be not one of them that can find an expression or a word which he feels himself disposed to disapprove: viz. neither on any such score as decency, or liberality, or candour, or propriety, and so forth, as above:—and what if he can not? Only that in that case, for supporting a verdict of conviction, then some other ground must be looked out for, of which, while such doctrines as have just been seen are acceded to, whether it be possible there should be any deficiency, the reader may now judge.

If, in the event of his entertaining, in relation to any passage thus brought under his review, any such emotion as that of disapprobation or dislike, it would afford to his feelings any gratification to be contributory to the subjecting the delinquent to punishment, in such case, whether a juror will not find, in these established doctrines, an amply sufficient warrant, for the affording this gratification to the irascible part of his frame, may be seen already.

But, whether inclined or not inclined, will it be in his power to avoid it?—In his power? physically or metaphysically speaking, yes:—but, to keep clear of metaphysics and every thing that ends in—ism, practically speaking—whatever be the state of a juryman’s inclinations, can there, for any proposed writer on politics or legislation, which is as much as to say for any proposed libeller—can there be any rational hope or prospect, of witnessing, on the part of any such juryman, any such forbearance?

The degree of probability in question cannot, it is evident, but be, in a high degree, influenced, even if not in one event converted into moral certainty, by the mode of address pursued by the directing judge: by the degree of freewill which it may please this creator to have left or not left to his habitually obedient creatures. To learn, if possible, a thing so necessary to salvation, let us open the book of history, that in it we may behold the words of prophecy, and read in it the eventual doom that is in store for us.*

“No question is made,” says the Lord Chief-Justice, “as to the publication itself being a libel:”—the fact is incontestable, but the cause, what can it have been? The inquiry is a curious one: and in the answer may be seen a confirmation of the moral impossibility of any verdict other than that of guilty at the hands of a jury of guinea-men, not to say of any men, so directed.

On the trial of the other defendant, in regard to some parts at least, if not the whole, of this multifarious libel, a “question” of this sort had, as we have seen, been made: made, and by the same learned gentleman, who, after having been leading counsel for the political writer, officiated now in the same character for the culprit judge. The question having been made then, how comes it not to be made now?

On that former occasion, the authority which the learned counsel had to contend with, was no other than that of a single judge: on this present occasion, the authority before which he has to plead, is that of the entire judicatory:—-a judicatory, composed of four judges, of whom the judge in question, though in authority the chief, was in number no more than one.

“Do you maintain that a person has a right to ridicule his neighbour . . . . ?”

In the report given of this trial, the words pronounced by the noble and learned Lord Chief-Justice are reported, or professed to be reported, by the reporting scribe:—the tone, the countenance, the deportment, by which the interruptive interrogation was accompanied, were not—any of them—nor could they have been—included in the report.

Whatsoever was the cause—whether an acquaintance with the persons and dispositions of the guinea-men to whom the defence would have been to be addressed—a consciousness that under such direction obsequiousness was a virtue not confined to the jury-box—or a casual deficiency of nervous power, such as learned advocates for liberty, no less than the unlearned, are liable to—or that, even where there is nothing dangerous, there is something unpleasant, and to polished feelings, grating, in kicking against the pricks, and pressing against the feelings of official superiors, whose countenances are day by day to be encountered—so it is that there being, according to the learned counsel’s own statement at least, nothing more at stake than “the liberty of the press”—that liberty which, as he had observed, “has ever been held as one of the first principles of the constitution”—nor from the doctrines, against which, on that former occasion, he had with so little fruit been contending, any worse effect to be apprehended, than the extinguishing of “that liberty for ever”—whatsoever may have been the cause of the abandonment, so it is that before this reinforced, and de jure at least superior, judicatory, the contest was not renewed.

§ 2.

On the part of a trained Juryman, Unobsequiousness still more hopeless.

But, if such was the no-resistance made by a sturdy veteran,—possessing, too, in the plea of professional duty, an excuse such as might have been expected to disarm resentment, call forth sympathy, and edulcorate feelings in the bosom even of the most obdurate judge—what, under such direction, could have been or ever can be—expected, for the relief of a defendant libeller, or for the preservation of the about to be “extinguished liberty”—what, I ask, can, to any such purpose, be, with any the least colour of reason, expected, from the firmness—let us not say of the craving guinea-man, who, in one unacceptable verdict, beholds the extinction of the race of his expected guineas—but of any gentleman habituated (as by the discipline of the Blackstone school all gentlemen are habituated) to regard in every word that cometh from the mouth of one of the reverend and learned twelve, the rule of legal faith—the unerring standard of rectitude?

[* ]“Report of a trial at bar of the Hon. Mr. Justice Johnson, one of the justices of his Majesty’s Court of Common Pleas, in Ireland, for a libel, in the Court of King’s Bench, on Saturday the 23d day of November 1805. Taken in short-hand by T. Jenkins and C. Farquharson, London, 1806:”—being the same libel of the publication of which Mr. Cobbett had been convicted as above.

Extracts from the charge given to the jury (a special one) by Lord Ellenborough, Lord Chief-Justice:—

1. P 117. “No question is made as to the publication itself being a libel: nor indeed could any question be agitated upon that subject . . . . .”

2. P. 117. “There can be no doubt in the world, but that it is a very gross and scandalous libel . . . . .”

3. P. 117. “No question has been made with regard to its libellous tendency: if it had been raised, you could ‘not have hesitated one moment.’ ”

4. P. 121. “If you believe this to be the handwriting of Judge Johnson, you will have no question to decide, as to the quality of the publication, but you will find him guilty.”

Such are the words, as taken in short-hand, of the Lord Chief-Justice.