The Life of the Law a Struggle
for its sake. Thus would the question of the struggle for the principles of law reduce itself to a simple problem in arithmetic, in which advantage and disadvantage are weighed one against the other, by each side, and the decision thus reached.
But that this is really by no means the case, every one knows. Daily experience shows us cases at law in which the value of the object in controversy is out of all proportion to the prospective expenditure of trouble, excitement, and money. No one who has dropped a dollar into a stream will give two to get it back again. For him, indeed, the question, how much he will expend upon its recovery, is a simple problem in arithmetic. But why does he not go through the same process of calculation when he contemplates a suit at law? Do not say that he calculates on winning it, and that the costs of the suit will fall upon his opponent. Every lawyer knows that the sure prospect of having to pay dearly for victory does not keep many persons from suing. How frequently it happens
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