LAW

MINUTE study of my fellow-creatures has revealed to me that there are many intelligent persons who think that a suit at law commences in court. This is not so. Many suits are fought and decided by the special pleaders, and so never come into court; and, as a stiff encounter of this kind actually took place in Hardie v. Hardie, a word of prefatory explanation may be proper. Suitors come into court only to try an issue: an issue is a mutual lie direct: and towards this both parties are driven upon paper by the laws of pleading, which may be thus summed: 1. Every statement of the adversary must either be contradicted flat, or confessed and avoided: “avoided” means neutralised by fresh matter. 2. Nothing must be advanced by plaintiff which does not disclose a ground of action at law. 3. Nothing advanced by defendant, which, if true, would not be a defence to the action. These rules exclude in a vast degree the pitiable defects and vices that mark all the unprofessional arguments one ever hears; for on a breach of any one of the said rules the other party can demur; the demurrer is argued before the judges in Banco, and, if successfully, the faulty plaint or faulty plea is dismissed, and often of course the cause won or lost thereby, and the country saved the trouble, and the suitors the expense of trying an issue.

So the writ being served by Plt.‘s attorney, and an appearance put in by Deft.‘s, the paper battle began by Alfred Hardie, through his attorney, serving on Deft.‘s attorney “THE DECLARATION.” This was drawn by his junior counsel, Garrow, and ran thus, after specifying the court and the date:

Middlesex to wit Alfred Hardie by John Compton his attorney sues Thomas Hardie For that the Deft, assaulted Plt. gave him into custody to a certain person and caused him to be imprisoned for a long space of time in a certain place to wit a Lunatic Asylum whereby the Plt. was much inconvenienced and suffered much anguish and pain in mind and body and was unable to attend to his affairs and was injured in his credit and circumstances.

And the Plt. claims L. 5000.

Mr. Compton conveyed a copy of this to Alfred, and said it was a sweet “declaration.” “What,” said Alfred, “is that all I have suffered at these miscreants’ hands? Why, it is written with an icicle.”

Mr. Compton explained that this was the outline: “Counsel will lay the colours on in court as thick as you like.”

The defendant replied to the above declaration by three pleas.

By statute 8 & 9 Vic., c. 100, s. 105.

1. The Deft. by Joseph Heathfield his attorney says he is not guilty. 2. And for a further Plea the Deft, says that before and at the time of the alleged imprisonment Plt, was a person of unsound mind and incompetent to take care of himself and a proper person to be taken care of and detained and it was unfit unsafe improper and dangerous that he should be at large thereupon the Deft, being the uncle of the Plt. and a proper person to cause the Plt. to be taken charge of under due care and treatment in that behalf did cause the Plt. to be so taken charge of and detained under due care and treatment, &c. &c.

The third plea was the stinger, but too long to cite verbatim; it went to this tune, that the plaintiff at and before the time &c. had conducted himself like a person of unsound mind &c. and two certificates that he was insane had been given by two persons duly authorised under the statute to sign such certificates, and the defendant had believed and did bona fide believe these certificates to be true, &c. &c.

The first of these pleas was a mere formal plea, under the statute.

The second raised the very issue at common law the plaintiff wished to try.

The third made John Compton knit his brows with perplexity. “This is a very nasty plea,” said he to Alfred: “a regular trap. If we join issue on it we must be defeated; for how can we deny the certificates were in form; and yet the plaguy thing is not loose enough to be demurred to? Colls, who drew these pleas for them?”

“Mr. Colvin, sir.”

“Make a note to employ him in our next stiff pleading.”

Alfred was staggered. He had thought to ride rough-shod over defendant — a common expectation of plaintiffs; but seldom realised. Lawyers fight hard. The pleas were taken to Garrow; he said there was but one course, to demur to No. 3. So the plaintiff “joined issue on all the defendant’s pleas, and as to the last plea the plaintiff said the same was bad in substance.” Defendant rejoined that the same was good in substance, and thus Hardie v. Hardie divided itself into two cases, a question of law for the judges, and an issue for the mixed tribunal loosely called a jury. And I need hardly say that should the defendant win either of them he would gain the cause.

Postponing the history of the legal question, I shall show how Messrs. Heathfield fought off the issue, and cooled the ardent Alfred and sickened him of law.

In theory every Englishman has a right to be tried by his peers: but in fact there are five gentlemen in every court, each of whom has by precedent the power to refuse him a jury, by simply postponing the trial term after term, until the death of one of the parties, when the action, if a personal one, dies too; and, by a singular anomaly of judicial practice, if a slippery Deft. can’t persuade A. or B., judges of the common law court, to connive at what I venture to call

THE POSTPONEMENT SWINDLE,

he can actually go to C., D., and B., one after another, with his rejected application, and the previous refusal of the other judges to delay and baffle justice goes for little or nothing; so that the postponing swindler has five to one in his favour.

Messrs. Heathfield began this game unluckily. They applied to a judge in chambers for a month to plead. Mr. Compton opposed in person, and showed that this was absurd. The judge allowed them only four days to plead. Issue being joined, Mr. Compton pushed on for trial, and the cause was set down for the November term. Towards the end of the term Messrs. Heathfield applied to one of the puisne judges for a postponement, on the ground that a principal witness could not attend. Application was supported by the attorney’s affidavit, to the effect that Mr. Speers was in Boulogne, and had written to him to say that he had met with a railway accident, and feared he could not possibly come to England in less than a month. A respectable French doctor confirmed this by certificate. Compton opposed, but the judge would hardly hear him, and postponed the trial as a matter of course; this carried it over the sittings into next term. Alfred groaned, but bore it patiently; not so Dr. Sampson: he raged against secret tribunals: “See how men deteriorate the moment they get out of the full light of publeecity. What English judge, sitting in the light of Shorthand, would admit ‘Jack swears that Gill says’ for legal evidence. Speers has sworn to no facks. Heathfield has sworn to no facks but th’ existence of Speer’s hearsay. They are a couple o’ lyres. I’ll bet ye ten pounds t’ a shilling Speers is as well as I’m.”

Mr. Compton quietly reminded him there was a direct statement — the French doctor’s certificate.

“A medical certificut!” shrieked Sampson, amazed. “Mai — dearr — sirr, a medical certificut is just an article o’ commerce like an attorney’s conscience. Gimme a guinea and I’ll get you sworn sick, diseased, disabled, or dead this minute, whichever you like best.”

“Come, doctor, don’t fly off: you said you’d bet ten pounds to a shilling Speers is not an invalid at all. I say done.”

“Done.”

“How will you find out?”

“How? Why set the thief-takers on um, to be sure.”

He wrote off to the prefect of police at Boulogne, and in four days received an answer headed “Information in the interest of families.” The prefect informed him there had been no railway accident: but that the Sieur Speers, English subject, had really hurt his leg getting out of a railway carriage six weeks ago, and had kept his room some days; but he had been cured some weeks, and going about his business, and made an excursion to Paris.

On this Compton offered Sampson the shilling. But he declined to take it. “The lie was self-evident,” said he; “and here’s a judge wouldn’t see’t, and an attorney couldn’t. Been all their lives sifting evidence, too. Oh the darkness of the profissional mind!”

The next term came. Mr. Compton delivered the briefs and fees, subpoenaed the witnesses, &c., and Alfred came up with a good heart to get his stigma removed by twelve honest men in the light of day: but first one case was taken out of its order and put before him, then another, till term wore near an end. Then Messrs. Heathfield applied to another judge of the court for a postponement. Mr. Richard Hardie, plaintiff’s father, a most essential witness, was ill at Clare Court. Medical certificate and letter herewith.

Compton opposed. Now this judge was a keen and honourable lawyer, with a lofty hatred of all professional tricks. He heard the two attorneys, and delivered himself to this effect, only of course in better legal phrase: “I shall make no order. The defendant has been here before on a doubtful affidavit. You know, Mr. Heathfield, juries in these cases go by the plaintiff’s evidence, and his conduct under cross-examination. And I think it would not be just nor humane to keep this plaintiff in suspense, and civiliter mortuum, any longer. You can take out a commission to examine Richard Hardie.”

To this Mr. Compton nailed him, but the commission took time; and while it was pending, Mr. Heathfield went to another judge with another disabled witness: Peggy Black. That naive personage was nursing her deceased sister’s children — in an affidavit: and they had scarlatina — surgeon’s certificate to that effect. Compton opposed, and pointed out the blot. “You don’t want the children in the witness-box,” said he: “and we are not to be robbed of our trial because one of your witnesses prefer nursing other people’s children to facing the witness-box.”

The judge nodded assent. “I make no order,” said he.

Mr. Heathfield went out from his presence and sent a message by telegraph to Peggy Black. “You must have Scar. yourself, and telegraph the same at once: certificate by post.”

The accommodating maiden telegraphed back that she had unfortunately taken scarlatina of the children: medical certificate to follow by post. Four judges out of the five were now awake to the move. But Mr. Heathfield tinkered the hole in his late affidavit with Peggy’s telegram, and slipped down to Westminster to the chief judge of the court, who had had no opportunity of watching the growth and dissemination of disease among Deft.‘s, witnesses. Compton fought this time by counsel and with a powerful affidavit. But luck was against him. The judge had risen to go home: he listened standing; Compton’s counsel was feeble; did not feel the wrong. How could he? Lawyers fatten by delays of justice, as physicians do by tardy cure. The postponement was granted.

Alfred cursed them all, and his own folly in believing that an alleged lunatic would be allowed fair play at Westminster, or anywhere else. Compton took snuff, and Sampson appealed to the press again. He wrote a long letter exposing with fearless irony the postponement swindle as it had been worked in Hardie v. Hardie: and wound up with this fiery peroration:

“This Englishman sues not merely for damages, but to recover lost rights dearer far than money, of which he says he has been unjustly robbed: his right to walk in daylight on the soil of his native land without being seized and tied up for life like a nigger or a dog; his footing in society; a chance to earn his bread; and a place among mankind: ay, among mankind; for a lunatic is an animal in the law’s eye and society’s, and an alleged lunatic is a lunatic till a jury clears hi............