1 June 1807

Letter V

II. Proper Remedies

Applied to damage, the distinction between direct and consequential is not unknown to Technical Justice in our English dress, than it is to Natural Justice: consequential may be considered as corresponding so far as it extends, to extraordinary interest, as above described.

Such being the position of the solvent knave, the line of necessary policy to be pursued by Judge and C o for converting him in the station of defendant into a malâ fide litigant, and at the stage of appeal into a malâ fide appellant was plain and obvious. So long as he can contrive to stave off judgment and execution on the appeal, suffer him to extract from the delay whatsoever profit his situation enables him to make, non-commercial or commercial, ordinary or extraordinary - and that without reimbursement - if according to his calculation the profit thus extractable from the delay be superior to the expence necessary to the purchase of it - superior to his share of the expence of litigation, his enlistment in the service of Judge and C o in the character of malâ fide appellant is a matter of course.

Thus obvious being the policy of Judge and C o, the counter-policy of the legislator is little less so. 1. Take away from him all such profit by delay: and, in the particular case of malâ fide appeal, to effect this object by the surest as well as most simple means, when a man appeals from a judgment, suffer not the appeal to be productive of any such effect as that of stopping execution on the judgment appealed from: except in the particular sort of case that will be mentioned presently, cause execution to take place, as if no appeal had been made.