date

3 March 1804 Evidence Securities
3 March 1804

Evidence

Securities

Ch. Procedure Technical

Declaration of bona fides

Examples

Note (a)

(a) As to the partial expedients, they are not only constructed upon a bad plan - but were according to their bad plan, badly executed.

The affidavit for holding to Court may serve as a sample of the rest. It requires much more candour than is consistent with evidence to suppose, that the lawyer by whom it was contrived had it really in his wish to carry the remedy a hairs breadth further than it was possible for him to avoid carrying it.

1. The debt must indeed be sworn to: but nothing like a negative is required to be put upon the existence of a set off; + so that in the case of mutual claims, the debtor upon the ballance has it as much in his power to employ this coercion for his creditor in this way, as the creditor to seek a necessary security against his debtor.

2. The coercion, if justifiable, is so on no other supposition than that of its being necessary to prevent the removal of the defendant through the apprehension of insolvency out of the reach of law /justice/. But no warrant /declaration/ on the part of the creditor is required, professing so much as the least apprehension /suspicion/ on his part that any such deficiency is to be apprehended.

It is for want of regulations /amendments/ thus obvious - thus plainly indicated by every days experience, that this power continues to be employed as an instrument of oppression under the eyes of these, to whom oppression in every shape, if the routine of language is to be believed, is the object of continual and inescapable /infrequent and implausible[?]/ abhorrence.
Similar Items
  • Title: [3 March 1804 Evidence Securities]
    Description: 3 March 1804

    Evidence

    Securities

    Ch. Procedure Technical

    ''. Engl. Law

    Declaration of bona fide - Examples

    ''. Duration of bona fides - Examples

    In here and there an instance the torrent of mendacity and wilful injustice has been checked: checked in the only effectual way in which it could be checked, by bringing /attaching/ home the responsibility in case of mendacity, to the party profiting by it.

    Till within the memory of persons still living, every man might have ensigned to prison in the first instance to prison every other, with or without the expence of falshood in respect of the general assertion implied in every legal claim, and without the expence of any particular averment, to which in case of mendacity, mendacity might be imputed. After the business had gone on for ages upon this failing, came at length the statute by which a man who thus consigns to prison another man for a supposed debt, is obliged to swear /make an averment/ in the shape of an /a written/ affidavit, that a debt to a certain amount is owing to him.

    Other requisitions, may even be mentioned, which as far as they go are of the same tendency.

    In Equity practice /procedure/ to a Bill of Interpleader, must be answered, on the part of the Plaintiff, an Affidavit of Non-collection: that is,

     Go on with instances[?]
  • Title: [1 Aug. 1812 Evidence Introd]
    Description: 1 Aug. 1812

    Evidence Introd

    Introd

    Ch. 26 Imp[?]

    ' Bad for compulsion

    3. Upon the face of it to the purpose in question, the infliction in question does it carry any sufficient promise of being effectual? Not it indeed.

    At the charge of the Debtor himself effectual it can not be, in so far as property to the amount in question property fails of being in his /at his/ possession is at his command.

    At the charge of any other person, in the character of friend, prompted by sympathy to release /relieve/the Debtor from this infliction, that it should be effectual, is not for the common good of all persons concerned is not as hath[?] being shewn already a desirable result desirable.

    At the charge of the Debtor himself, where these necessary means are actually at his command, its efficiency, managed as it is is in a high degree imperfect in comparison of what is most obviously might and ought to be.

    To the many a bill, to the comparatively few a prison is though not /not indeed/ a paradise but however a place of comfort: of comfort obtained at the expence of the injured creditor, by /from/ the interested connivance of the Judge.

    Solitary confinement - to the purpose to which it /this severe infliction/ is least well adapted, for the purpose of punishment as in a most inordinate degree been with the most unthinking levels but too often applied. Solitary confinement continued for two years together, and the victim not yet [..?] broken nor reduced to a state of melancholy madness.
  • Title: [17 Jan y 1802 27 May 1799 4. Divergency]
    Description: 17 Jan y 1802

    27 May 1799 4. Divergency or long not divergent upon him

    My Lord when a bankrupt debtor finds himself besieged and way-laid by his ruined creditor, it is not the question of the apprehended discourse — it is the subject matter and nature of it that renders it intolerable.