And I need hardly say that should the defendant win either of them
he would gain the cause.
Postponing the history of the legal _question,_ I shall show how Messrs.
Heathfield fought off the _issue,_ and cooled the ardent Alfred and
sickened him of law.
In theory every Englishman has a right to be tried by his peers: but in
fact there are five gentlemen in every court, each of whom has by
precedent the power to refuse him a jury, by simply postponing the trial
term after term, until the death of one of the parties, when the action,
if a personal one, dies too; and, by a singular anomaly of judicial
practice, if a slippery Deft. can't persuade A. or B., judges of the
common law court, to connive at what I venture to call
THE POSTPONEMENT SWINDLE,
he can actually go to C., D., and B., one after another, with his
rejected application, and the previous refusal of the other judges to
delay and baffle justice goes for little or nothing; so that the
postponing swindler has five to one in his favour.
Messrs. Heathfield began this game unluckily. They applied to a judge in
chambers for a month to plead.
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