a serious one, serious to such a degree, as to make it worth his while to demand redress at the hand of justice.—Conduct is the test of feeling. I know of no right I have to set up any feelings of my own as the standard of those of my neighbour, in contradiction to a declaration of his, the truth of which is evidenced by his own conduct. What to one man again is trivial, to another man may be of high importance. In the account of wrong too must be included, not only the individual wrong taken by itself, but its effects in the way of encouragement to repetition, and its effects in the way of example. I know of no wrong so slight, that by multiplication may not become intolerable. Give me but a licence to do to any person at pleasure the minutest wrong conceivable;—I need no more, that person is my slave. Allow me to rob him, though it be but of a farthing, farthing by farthing, I will find the bottom of his purse. Allow me but to let fall a drop of water upon his head—gutta cavat lapidem, the power of striking his head off would be less susceptible of abuse.
In pecuniary cases, the smaller the sum in dispute, the less reserve is used in branding the conduct of the parties with the charge of litigation, of which, in such cases the reproach is apt to fall principally, if not exclusively, to the plaintiff's share. But the importance of the sum is altogether governed by the circumstances of the parties: the amount of it in pounds, shillings, and pence, shows nothing. One man's income may be a hundred, a thousand, four thousand times as great as that of another. In England there are men whose income exceeds £60,000 a year. £15 a year is as much as falls to the lot of perhaps the greater number of the whole body of the people. Without a particular caution, a legislator or a judge will naturally enough, like any other man, take the relation of the sum in dispute to his own feelings, that is, its ratio to his own circumstances, for the measure of importance: but by this standard he will be sure to be deceived, as often as the circumstances of the parties, or either of them, are materially different from his own. Fifty pound, for example, will be apt to appear in his eyes an object of considerable importance: an object of which a tenth or a twentieth part, or less, might be of importance sufficient to justify from the charge of litigation, the maintenance of a suit. A shilling would be almost sure to appear to him an object altogether trifling; an object by no means of magnitude enough to warrant the maintenance of a suit. Fifty pound is however a sum of less importance to a Duke of Marlborough or Bedford, than a single shilling (viz. than a thousandth part of £50) to many a man, in truth to probably the majority of men in the kingdom. It is therefore more unjust, more tyrannical, to refuse to hear the demand of an ordinary working man to the amount of a shilling, than it would be to refuse to hear the demand of a Duke of Marlborough or Bedford, to the amount of £50. The legislator, who on the plea of checking litigation, or on any other plea, exacts of a working man as a preliminary to his obtaining justice, what that working man is unable to pay, does refuse to him a hearing, does in a word refuse him justice, and that as effectually and completely, as it is possible to refuse it.
That all men should have equal rights, not only would be politically pernicious, but is naturally impossible: but I hope this will not be said of equal justice.
Trivial causes require no such factitious checks: to such causes were all expenses struck off that can be struck off, there are natural checks in abundance, that are unavoidable. There is the pain of disappointment: there is expense, of which a certain measure will every now and then be absolutely unavoidable: there is consumption of time, which to the working classes, that is, to the great majority of the people, is expense.
But even let the cause be trivial, and that to such a degree as to render the act of commencing the litigation blameable, the blame is never so great on the side of the party most favoured by the tax, as on the side of the party most oppressed by it. The party most oppressed is the complainant—the party who having suffered the injury, such as it is, claims or would claim satisfaction for it at the hands of justice. But, so as there does but exist the smallest particle of an injury, the party who claims satisfaction for it can never be so much in the wrong for doing so, but that he who refuses satisfaction must be still more so. If the demand be just, why did not he comply with it? If just, but trifling, why does he contest it? In this case then you cannot punish in this way the misconduct of one party, without rewarding the still greater misconduct of the other. If the tax applies a check where there is blame, it affords protection and encouragement where there is still greater blame.
Another injustice.—The poorer a man is, the more exposed he is to the oppression of which this supposed remedy against litigation is the instrument. But the poorer a man is, the less likely he is to be litigious. The less time a man has to spare, and the less a man can afford to expend his time (not to speak of money) without being paid for it, the less likely is he to expose himself to such a consumption of his time.
The rich man, the man who has time and money at command, he surely, if any, is the man to consume it litigiously and frivolously. No wonder however, if to a superficial glance, the poor should appear more litigious than he.
