Punch or The London charivari: Punch or The London charivari (2.1842)

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PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

COUNTY COURTS' BILL. INIQUITIES OF
ENGLISH LAW.

NGLISH parchment has more to an-
swer for than Turkish bowstrings.
This is a creed which — were every
departed Lord Chief Justice, now dis-
porting in fields of asphodel, sent back
to this world to refute—would still re-
main within us. Great is our abhor-
rence of foreign tyranny ! loud and
deep our indignation at the fantastic
despotism of exotic princes, from the
Russian Moloch in his furs, to the
^Vi?-=d'f - lix naked human ebony on his throne of

tnnna bamboo. Our hatred of the fo-
reigner is in a great measure born of our self-complacency. We
see no brother Briton placed in manacles at the will of a tyrant—we
hear not the screams of Englishmen writhing beneath the scourge of
■wayward cruelty. Were Queen Victoria (may all good thoughts
attend her !) to command the noses of sundry of her subjects to be
cut off, or (in imitation of the laughter-loving Charles the Second)
slit to the bone, it is our belief that the nation would rise as though
the whole kingdom had but one nose, and that the mutilated nasus.
Hence our sympathy with those of our wretched fellow-creatures, the
subjects of the Tartar and the Turk. They have no nose to call
their own—they wear

"-that which is the grace

And proscenium of a face''

only during good behaviour ; they have noses only quamdiu se bene
gesserint.

But John Bull's nose is a sacred member. He believes he has a
right to poke it any or everywhere. Now, is he irreverently sniffing
witli it in all parts of our blessed constitution ; now is he taking his
nose to good and gracious mother Church, and by certain irreverent
contortions of the face indicating that many stalls and deaneries have
about them something that is neither myrrh nor frankincense. Now,
he thrusts his nose into Parliament ; and oh, how the member quivers
with indignation and changes purple and red like the nose of a man-
dril, when John stumbles upon the foulness of—a job ! How lustily
he calls out, and bringing all the neighbourhood about him, how he
holds forth upon the abomination, and having done so, ninety-nine
times out of the hundred, passes on, leaving the foulness just as it is !
He is quite content that he has shown a wickedness, and the wicked-
ness remains. Come what will, he has asserted the delicacy and the
high constitutional privilege of his nose. Hence, John Bull is, in the
freest sense of the term, a free man. He thinks upon the Chinese,
and pities them. He remembers the Russian, and the thought sub-
limates him with a sense of his Britannic superiority.

But John Bull is either an ass or a hypocrite. Let the truth be
said—he is a slave ; but as Wordsworth says, he wears

" The fetters in his soul."
He is cut, and striped, and lacerated ; but his wounds bleed inwardly ;
and so John, with a half-smirking, half-bullying face, declares him-
self to be free as mountain winds—to be whole, intact, perfect as
Apollo. Whilst John pities the wretch of Pekin and of Petersburgh
as the victim of capricious despotism, he himself—for all his bluff,
outstaring looks — is the serf, the bondsman of the English
lawyer. It is true, John may defy the bowstring ; but can he laugh
at that more fatal ligament—red tape ? He may snap his fingers at
the Knout ; but can he smile at that Beelzebub's blister, parchment ?
He may scorn to strike his forehead in the dust at the look or beck
of king or kaiser; but, taken in execution, can he, with light con-
science and unimpeded larynx, chirrup " Britons never shall be
slaves" on the debtors' side of the Fleet ?

Turkey has her eunuchs, Russia her Cossacks, and England her
attorneys ! There is for the sins, or rather the supposed sins of men,
the bow-string, the spear, and the writ !

the Inns of Court) on something less than half allowance of flesh—
to very considerably limit his draught of blood, taken warm by writ
or cognovit from the living animal. Of course, there will be another
shout of horror—another roar of indignation loud enough to make
the bones of Jeffreys rattle in the grave—at the attempted enormity.
The cannibal will still plead for his monopoly of heartstrings—will
still groan for his "vested rights" in the very marrow of his victims.
To be sure, the Duke of Wellington, who, on the passing of that
infamous and revolutionary measure, the abolition of arrest, for debt
on mesne process, stoutly advocated the rights of despoiled sheriff's
officers, contending that the wounds of a Nathan and a Levi should
be dressed at the expense of the State with the salve of indemnity,—
the Duke is still in the House of Lords, and may stand up for the
sacredness of Costs, for his vested interests in the heart's-blood and
bowels of all present and future Englishmen. We once more may
hear Achilles pleading for the innocent civilian, attorney Polyphemus !

Let us suppose that a billshall havejurisdiction in all matters of debt
from cases of 40s. to 20/., such debt to be recovered at a small expense.
This would, we fear, bring Justice into great contempt among the peo-
ple, inasmuch as she would be made much more familiar to them than
heretofore. Lawyers, it is well known, have a great horror of cheap
Justice ; and many of them, to their own satisfaction (albeit they
have failed to convince their clients) have proved that Justice when
made cheap must be a very dowdy. Their only notion of Justice is
Justice decked out like a dowager—with stomacher of diamonds,
rustling satins, cobweb lace (typical of the fine mesh of law), and
plenty of paint ! She is then a presentable Justice ; but to make her
cheap is to make her infamous. When Justice is thus arrayed,
then is she fine, majestic ; a very Madame Pompadour ; the deity of
palaces. Her slight peccadillos are merged, forgotten in the wealth
that blazes about her. Make her cheap, and you make her worth-
less ; the Pompadour (the companion of Kings) becomes a Betty
Slamerkin. It is because lawyers are not wedded to Justice, that,
like other profligates with their nominal wives, they would have her
dress finely.

A black eye or bleeding nose—a slight spot of mud carelessly
thrown upon the cambric of a gentleman's character—any small
action of tort, battery, or libel,—becomes under the present system a
magnificent thing, involving a great risk of capital to obtain the
smallest monetary satisfaction for the wrong. What if we have a bill
that cheapens the remedy ? A bill under which a man may buy salve
for his eye, stanch his nose, and make his character (so far as law can
do these things) white as his counsel's neckband, for, in comparison
with present costs, a few shillings? As it is, law in these matters is
a luxury. The new bill would sell the law, as they now sell melons
to the poor, in good penn'orths.

There is a third clause in the Bill which, we have no doubt, spoilt
many an attorney's breakfast on Tuesday morning. We mean the
"clause of reconcilement!" In Denmark, said Lord Brougham,
out of 31,000 causes entered for hearing, 21,000 had been settled by
the clause of reconcilement. And yet—though it would be hard
to convince many " an old respectable practitioner " of the fact—yet
"grassy Denmark " stands where it did—no earthquake, with a sym-
pathy for Danish attorneys,has swallowed it up ; neither is it "in the
flat sea sunk." On Tuesday night, the "Clause of Reconcilement,"
in diabolic shape, sat, nightmare-like, on the innocent breast of many
an attorney !

"May it go to the devil, and may them as made it go after it !"
Such was the pious exclamation of one Aaron, officer in service of
the sheriff, as—standing at the threshold of a Chancery-lane law-sta-
tioner, a May sun shining on his parchment cheek—he was led into
angry discussion on the abolition of arrest for debt. " May it go to
the devil," (or at least to a place where it is understood the devil
commonly resides,) "and them as made it go after it—for now," and
here a crystal tear, bright as Aaron's shirt-stud gemmed the corner
of his eye of Caption—"for now, there's no making twenty pounds
by bail-bonds afore breakfast!" Aaron spoke a serious, social
truth. The sheriffs-officer has been robbed ; and though the Duke
was eloquent, there was no indemnity '

Well, suppose it is again proposed to reduce the amount of | In the same intense and affecting spirit with whichAARON bewailed
torture daily inflicted by the inquisitors of the Law list — the j theannihilationof bail-bonds, will attorneys execrate Lord Brougham,
benevolences blessing happy Britain—the sages who, in the holy j and lament his County Courts Bill. That measure goes to destroy
name of justice, fatten on the flesh and blood of their fellow-crea-j legal plunder—to cheapen justice—to make law an emanation of
tures, and, otherwise doubtless very respectable men, many of them J the reason of the sage, and not the cunning of the cut-purse. The
keeping their carriages and pineries, and duly confessing themselves Bill has been once defeated by the " proxies " of the House of Lords,
one day a week really "miserable sinners," are, the remaining six, : Of the philosophy of the custom of " proxy " we shall speak in an
true Anthropophagi,—yea, veritable man, woman, and child eaters ! early Number ; at present—

Lord Brougham's " Local Courts Bill" goes very far to put the ***** *

oannibal Costs (Sawney Bean was a sucking-dove to that pet ogre of j We had proceeded thus far, when we were called to the windov