This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1847 edition. Excerpt: ... ing, the English lawyer with all the prolixity, confusion, and delay which he defends on the ground of ultimately securing justice, has recourse to means which would shock a Turkish cadi. The law actually shuts the mouth of a party wishing to complain, and, not content with that, allows the adversary to ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1847 edition. Excerpt: ... ing, the English lawyer with all the prolixity, confusion, and delay which he defends on the ground of ultimately securing justice, has recourse to means which would shock a Turkish cadi. The law actually shuts the mouth of a party wishing to complain, and, not content with that, allows the adversary to insist upon the silence of the party whose mouth is so shut, as a proof that, he had nothing to say if it had been opened. I do not exaggerate when I say that in no other civilised country but those governed by English law is a man compelled in a Court of Justice to abandon a legitimate ground of enforcing his claim by the law itself, a priori, and to admit in favour of his antagonist the direct reverse to be true of that which he could prove, (a) and which the law forbids him to establish. Where would be the merit of a system, though never so compendious, which had recourse to so barbarous and inartificial a method as this. If you refuse to hear what people have to say, no wonder if you decide speedily. But when we purchase such injustice at the price of chicane, prolixity and delay, which would make the fullest justice in the eyes of many worthless; when we see such pedantic subtlety, combined with so gross an outrage on the first principles of natural right, does not every other feeling merge (a) See Bourge v. Stewart, 7 Man. & Gr. 746, for an instance; the decision was, that the replication was bad for duplicity, as either of the facts stated by the plaintiff in it, would have been an answer to defendant's plea; therefore, because the plaintiff had two satisfactory answers to the defendant instead of one, the defendant triumphed! and we call ourselves a practical people! So Macleod v. Schvltze, 3 Dowl. & Lowndes. in amazement, that among any...
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