in Banco, and, if successfully, the faulty plaint, or
faulty plea, is dismissed, and often of course the
cause won or lost thereby, and the country saved
the trouble, and the suitors the expense, of trying
an issue.

So the writ being served by plaintiff's attorney,
and an appearance put in by defendant's, the paper
battle began by Alfred Hardie, through his
attorney, serving on defendant's attorney "THE
DECLARATION." This was drawn by his junior
counsel, Garrow, and ran thus, after specifying
the count and the date:

Middlesex to wit.

Alfred Hardie by John Compton his
attorney sues Thomas Hardie For
that the Deft. assaulted Plt. gave him
into custody to a certain person and
caused him to be imprisoned for a
long space of time in a certain place
to wit a Lunatic Asylum whereby the
Plt. was much inconvenienced and
suffered much anguish and pain in
mind and body and was unable to
attend to his affairs and was injured
in his credit and circumstances.
And the Plt. claims £5000.

Mr. Compton conveyed a copy of this to
Alfred, and said it was a beautiful declaration.
"What," said Alfred, "is that all I have
suffered at these miscreants' hands? Why, it is
written with an icicle."

Mr. Compton explained that this was the
outline; "Counsel will lay the colours on in court as
thick as you like."

The defendant replied to the above declaration
by three pleas.

By statute 8 & 9 Vic., c. 100, s.105.

1. The Deft. by Joseph Heathfield
his attorney says he is not guilty.
2. And for a further Plea the Deft.
says that before and at the time of
the alleged imprisonment Plt. was a
person of unsound mind and
incompetent to take care of himself and a
proper person to be taken care of and
detained and it was unfit unsafe
improper and dangerous that he should
be at large thereupon the Deft. being
the uncle of the Plt. and a proper
person to cause the Plt. to be taken
charge of under due care and treatment
in that behalf did cause the
Plt. to be so taken charge of and
detained under due care and treatment,
&c. &c.

The third plea was the stinger, but too long
to cite verbiatim; it went to this tune, that the
plaintiff at and before the time &c. had
conducted himself like a person of unsound mind
&c. and two certificates that he was insane had
been given by two persons duly authorised under
the statute to sign such certificates, and the
defendant had believed and did bonâ fide believe
these certificates to be true, &c. &c.

The first of these pleas was a mere formal plea,
under the statute.

The second raised the very issue at common
law the plaintiff wished to try.

The third made John Compton knit his brows
with perplexity. "This is a very nasty plea,"
said he to Alfred: "a regular trap. If we join
issue on it we must be defeated; for how can we
deny the certificates were in form; and yet the
plaguy thing is not loose enough to be demurred
to. Colls, who drew these pleas for them?"

"Mr. Colvin, sir."

"Make a note to employ him in our next stiff
pleading."

Alfred was staggered. He had thought to ride
roughshod over defendant: a common expectation
of plaintiffs: but seldom realised. Lawyers
fight hard. The pleas were taken to Garrow;
he said there was but one course, to demur to
No. 3. So the plaintiff "joined issue on all the
defendant's pleas, and as to the last plea the
plaintiff said the same was bad in substance."
Defendant rejoined that the same was good in
substance, and thus Hardie v. Hardie divided
itself into two cases, a question of law for the
judges, and an issue for the mixed tribunal
loosely called a jury. And I need hardly say that
should the plaintiff win one of them, and the
defendant the other, the cause would be won by the
defendant.

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
defendant 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 E., 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. Mr. Compton opposed in person, and
showed that this was absurd. The judge allowed
them only four days to plead. Issue being joined,
Mr. Compton pushed on for trial, and the cause
was set down for the November term. Towards
the end of the term Messrs. Heathfield applied
to one of the puinés judges for a postponement,
on the ground that a principal witness could not
attend. Application was supported by the
attorney's affidavit to the effect that Mr. Speers
was in Boulogne, and had written to him to say
that he had met with a railway accident, and
feared he could not possibly come to England in
less than a month. A respectable French doctor