ward off the attacks of injury: the natural influence of wealth, the influence of situation, the power of connexion, the advantages of education and intelligence, which go hand in hand with wealth. The poor has but one strong hold, the protection of the law: and out of this the financier drives him without vouchsafing him a thought, in company with the herd of malefactors.
The poor, on account of the ignorance and intellectual incapacity inseparably attached to poverty, are debarred generally—as perhaps it is necessary, were it only for their own sake, they should be universally—from the sweets of political power: but are not so many unavoidable inequalities enough, without being added to by unnecessary injustice?
Such is the description of those from whom this sum total of all rights is torn away with one hand, while tendered with the other: what are their numbers in proportion to the sum total of subjects? I fear to say—perhaps two thirds, perhaps four fifths, perhaps nine tenths: but at the lowest computation a vast majority.[1]
A third description of persons may yet be distinguished, whose condition under the system of law taxes is still more deplorable than that of either of the other two. I mean those, who having wherewithal to pay the imposition at the commencement of the suit, and during more or less of its progress, see their substance swallowed up by the taxes before the termination of it. The two preceding modifications of abuse, either of them bad enough, are thus put together, and compounded into a third.
Considered with a view to the treatment given to persons of this description, a court of justice is converted into exactly the same sort of place, as the shop of a baker would be, who having ranged his loaves along his window in goodly show to invite customers, should, instead of selling them the bread they asked for, first rob them of their money, and then turn them out of doors. To an unprejudiced imagination, the alliance between justice and finance, presents on this occasion a picture almost too near the truth to be termed an apologue. At the door of a house more predatory than any of those that are called houses of ill fame, the Judge in his robes presenting to unsuspecting passengers a belt to prick in; the Lord High Treasurer in the back ground with his staff, lying in wait, ready as soon as the victims are fairly housed, and the money on the table, to knock them down and run away with it. The difference is, that any man may choose whether he will prick in the belt of the unlicensed sharper, nor are any but the rawest louts to be so deluded: whereas the wisest men may be inveigled in, as well as the stoutest dragged in, by the exalted and commissioned plunderersso much surer is their game. For were the list of law taxes ever so familiar, and ever so easy to be understood, it is impossible for a man to know before hand, whether he has wherewithal to pay the bill, because it is impossible for him to know what incidents may intervene to lengthen it. Were a man even to sit down, and form a resolution to submit to every injury which he could not afford to prosecute for, and to plead guilty to every accusation which he could not afford to defend himself against, even at this price he could not save himself from the hardship of paying for justice, aggravated by the still greater hardship of not getting it.
If in all cases the practice is wicked, in some it is more particularly preposterous. In civil causes, and other causes where the injury to individuals affords a natural interest to prosecute, artificial expenses are cruelty and breach of faith: in a large class of penal causes, in which for want of such natural interest, prosecutors must be engaged by factitious inducements, or the law be a dead letter, the cruelty and treachery are crowned by blunder and inconsistency. Beckoned into court with one hand, men are driven away with the other. But, costly as the attractive power frequently is, the repulsive force is apt to be much stronger. Reward is subsequent, distant, uncertain, and dependent upon success. Trouble, expense, and odium, are certain and precedent.[2]
- ↑ In England, the expense of carrying through a common action, cannot be less than about £24 at the lowest rate, on the plaintiff's side alone. [See Schieffer on Costs, 1792.] The average expense of civil suits of all sorts, taking equity causes into the account, can surely not be rated at less than double that amount, on that one side. The average expenditure of an English subject, infants and adults, rich as well as poor, taken together, has been computed by Davenant (as quoted on this occasion somewhere by Adam Smith) at £8 a-year. Six years' income then is what a man must have in advance, before he can be admitted to take his chance for justice. Of many estimates which Dr. Anderson had met with, £20 was the highest, and he takes but ten pounds. [Interest of Great Britain with regard to her colonies, London, 1792.] No man then we may say at any rate, can have the benefit of justice, in the ordinary way, either in making good a just claim, or saving himself from an unjust one, who cannot find, for this purpose alone, a sum equal to several years of a man's income. From this statement it needs not much study to perceive, that for the bulk of the community, as far as ordinary cases of the civil kind are concerned, justice is but an empty name.
- ↑ This species of tax would stand absolutely alone in point of depravity, were it not for the tax on drugs, as far it extends to those used in medicine. This, as being also a tax upon distress, is so far in specie the same, but is nothing to it in degree. To recover a shilling in the way of justice, it will cost you at least £24, of which
