§ 4.

That men should sit down so apathetically as they do under the present corrupt administration of justice, is not a little remarkable. That we, with all our jealousy of abuses; with all our opportunities of canvassing, blaming, and amending the acts of the legislature; with all our readiness to organize and agitate; with the Anti-Corn-Law, Slavery-Abolition, and Catholic-Emancipation victories fresh in remembrance; that we, the independent, determined, self-ruling English, should Edition: current; Page: [258] daily behold the giant abominations of our judicial system, and yet do nothing to rectify them, is really quite incomprehensible. It is not as though the facts were disputed; all men are agreed upon them. The dangers of law are proverbial. The names of its officers are used as synonymes for trickery and greediness. The decisions of its courts are typical of chance. In all companies you hear but one opinion, and each person confirms it by a fresh illustration. Now you are informed of £300 having been expended in the recovery of forty shillings’ worth of property; and again of a cause that was lost because an affirmation could not be received in place of an oath. A right-hand neighbour can tell you of a judge who allowed an indictment to be objected to, on the plea that the words, “in the year of our Lord,” were not inserted before the date; and another to your left narrates how a thief lately tried for stealing a guinea-pig was acquitted, because a guinea-pig was shown to be a kind of rat, and a rat could not be property. At one moment the story is of a poor man whose rich enemy has deliberately ruined him by tempting him into litigation; and at the next it is of a child who has been kept in prison for six weeks, in default of sureties for her appearance as witness against one who had assaulted hera. This gentleman has been cheated out of half his property, but dared not attempt to recover it for fear of losing more; whilst his less prudent companion can parallel the experience of him who said that he had only twice been on the verge of ruin; once when he had lost a law-suit, and once when he had gained one. On all sides you are told of trickery and oppression, and revenge, committed in the name of justice; of wrongs endured for want of money wherewith to purchase redress; of rights unclaimed because contention with the powerful usurper was useless; of chancery-suits that outlasted the lives of the suitors; of fortunes swallowed up in settling a title; of estates lost by an informality. And then comes a catalogue of victims—of Edition: current; Page: [259] those who have trusted and been deceived; gray-headed men whose hardly-earned savings went to fatten the attorney; threadbare and hollow-cheeked insolvents who lost all in the attempt to get their due; some who had been reduced to subsist on the charity of friends; others who had died the death of a pauper; with not a few whose anxieties had produced insanity, or who in their desperation had committed suicide. Yet, whilst all parties echo each others’ exclamations of disgust, these iniquities continue unchecked!