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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.

II.

Deed of Mortgage.1

Author’s Draught.(No Topics given.)

“Proposed Charge of a principal Sum with Interest.

“This deed made the 1st day of April 1927, Between Andrew Allen ofNA of the one, and Benedict Butler, ofNA of the other part, witnesseth, that, in consideration of five hundred pounds sterling by the said B. Butler to the said A. Allen, now lent and paid, the said A. Allen doth charge all that Messuage or dwelling-house, with the outhouses and gardens thereto belonging; also the three following parcels of land thereto adjoining and therewith occupied, namely, Blackacre, being meadow, containing ten acres; Greenacre, being pasture, containing four acres two roods; and Whitacre, being arable, containing eight acres; All which said premises are situate in the parish of Stoke, in the county of Hereford, and are now in the occupation of Giles Hall, with the appurtenances thereto belonging, with the payment to the said B. Butler, of the sum of five hundred pounds, with interest at four per cent. per annum, as follows, viz. half a year’s interest of the same sum to be paid on the 1st day of October, now next ensuing, and the said principal sum of five hundred pounds and another half year’s interest,2 for the same to be paid on the 1st day of April, which will be in the year 1928.”

[1 ]Mortgage.] Mortgage is the denomination, by which, for the present purpose, I designate this sort of deed: this being the most important and obvious species of the genus for the designation of which our learned author has employed the word charge. Preferable however to mortgage—preferable in every point of view, and to a most important effect—would be land-pledge. Mortgage is understood by nobody; land-pledge would be understood by everybody; by everybody, male and female, who has ever seen or heard what passes at a pawnbroker’s. So much for name.

Behold now how much may depend upon a right name: behold the instruction that may be afforded by it. Give validity and currency to either of these forms—the author’s or the reviewer’s,—and there will be no more need of equity suits, nor any more need of delay, where land is the pledge, than where a pair of ear-rings, worth the same money, or a table-spoon, is the pledge: and the present licensed depredation—in some circumstances, on the part of the lender, in others on the part of the borrower,—is at an end. What is it that should make the difference? Is not a sheet of paper as easily passed from hand to hand as a pair of ear-rings? As to difference, if any there be, it is all of it in favour of the immoveable pledge; for, the jewels may be run off with; the land can not. Secresy—in regard to rents—is that an object? for example, on the borrower’s account, lest the state of his finances should be made known. More effectually can that be provided for in the case of the land, than in the case of the diamonds: the receiver of the rents, whoever he is, being supposed an object of confidence on both sides, the transfer is made to him: made to him, in trust, in case of payment on the appointed day, to deliver the money, or the land to the one party; in case of non-payment, to the other. Here, too, as far as regards the principal, all danger vanishes: trustee can no more run away with the land, than borrower or lender could; and as to the interest, it is no more than what every man, who employs a steward, by so doing trusts him with.

Indulgence to debtors—is that an object? How much better could it not be afforded, how much likelier would it not be to be afforded—by a creditor who had no law-charges to apprehend, than by one who has law-charges to apprehend—especially such as those which hang over his head at present?

Behold now the extent of the benefit which this theory, simple as it is, may be made productive of, if carried into practice: benefit to landlords in general; benefit to tenants in general; benefit to everybody, but to those who are among everybody’s worst enemies, and who will be sufficiently known by that name. Where recovery of rents is the object, in so far as there is property enough of the tenant’s, or anybody else’s upon the premises,—landlords—nor yet altogether without good reason—are by themselves trusted with the power of being themselves judges in their own cause. Well then—where recovery of possession is the object—pledges on the spot being wanting or insufficient—with how much less danger might they not be trusted with the power of being, to the effect in question, judges in the cause of others—meaning of course by others, those with whom they have no connexion? On this plan, in case of appeal—and in that case only—might those judicatories have cognizance, which at present have it in the first instance. Of the essentially and incurably corrupt, and, in every respect, unapt judicatory in question, my opinion is the same as that of the Morning Chronicle: but, so long as the people continue oppressed with it, I see much less danger from this power in its hand, than from most of that which is at present exercised by it.

As to the species of conveyances to which this system would be applicable,—the same principles which would give simplicity to deeds of sale, mortgage and settlement, would give correspondent simplicity to leases.

Turn now to the gaming-table. On a visit to it,—why, in that case, should not a noble lord, or honourable gentleman, put into his pocket a few papers of sales, mortgages, or leases, as well as the correspondent number of rouleaus? This is not a mere jest: for, if ruined, why might he not be so,—for the benefit of a set of companions of his own choice, with whom he was living on convivial terms, and in regard to whom, in conjunction with the chance of being ruined by them, he possessed an equal chance of enriching himself by their ruin, and from whom he might receive more or less of indulgence, why not as well for their benefit alone, as partly for their benefit, partly for the benefit of a set of lawyers whom he knows nothing of,—from whom nothing is to be got,—and from whom, on his part, nothing but ruin, or a more or less near approach towards it, can be expected?

Lawyers, by whom, comparatively speaking, such facility has been left to transfer, in the case of moveables,—whence happens it that they have dealt on so opposite a footing by it in the case of immoveables? Answer, altogether simple. Society could not have held together, and the matter of legal plunderage would either never have come into existence, or, as fast as it had come, would have been swallowed up,—had they thus loaded it in the case of moveables; but, in the case of immoveables, the magnitude of the masses is such as renders it possible for them to bear the load. Sweet, accordingly, is the “savour of the realty,” to learned noses.

[2 ]Another half year’s interest.] But what, if that happens which most commonly does happen? What, if the loan is continued, as it sometimes is, for years by dozens, beyond the twelvemonth? For this case no provision is here made. [See notes on the Reviewer’s Draught.] In any case, on failure of payment, prompt is the remedy needed; and next to instantaneous is the remedy which, as above, the nature of the case affords; yes, and which would be afforded in fact, if those judicatories, which are law and equity courts in name, were not iniquity courts, if not in purpose, in effect.