6 Mar 1808

L d Eldons Bill

Letter V

§.6. Reasons

Ends of Justice

6. Expence

6. Expence. Of a stock of litigation, vexation, is under every System an inseparable concomitant: Under the fee-gathering system so in an indefinitely variable but always large proportion, so is expence: even under the natural system, in some proportion or other, nearly so.

To every man to whom his time and labour are in any shape a source of profit, much more if of subsistence - that is in every country to all but comparatively a very few, the time consumed in attendances and other ways by litigation is, over and above the vexation in effect so much expence.

The sum being given whether being received it is disbursed, or whether the receipt of it be forgone makes in this respect no difference.

Where neither ability nor resolution to defray it are wanting, expence attached to litigation is expence (with its vexation) and nothing more. Where from the outset of the cause either are wanting, the evil changes its nature: on the plaintiff's side it is denial of justice: on the defendant's side it is misdecision to the prejudice of that side.

If at any intervening period between the commencement and the conclusion of the cause, the burthen of the expence becomes on either side intolerable and the party sinks under it, a load of expence and that a ruinous one is thus added, in the one case to denial of justice, in the other to misdecision to the prejudice of the defendant's side: that is either to extortion, or to oppression in some other of the many shapes in which oppression, that is the power of inflicting it, is to be purchased by every one who will pay the price, of the sworn ministers of justice. See misdecision to the prejudice of the defendants side.