27 Feb y 1807

Judicial Justice

Letter V

To return to suitors.

Suitors, who finding it or supposing it to be their interest to create superabundant delay, betake themselves accordingly to the creation of it, are the malâ fide suitors so often mentioned.

To the malâ fide suitor, superabundant delay is an instrument of mischief in different shapes - an instrument of simple vexation and oppression, or of undue profit, and in different ways, according as his station is on this or that side of the cause.

Is he on the plaintiff's side? - if his object be the production of mere vexation without profit, it affords him the desired gratification partly by the expence which to a greater or less degree is inseparably attached to the condition of litigant on each side, partly by the anxiety, the vexation with which a course of litigation is infested throughout the whole of its length.

If his object be undue profit, it may have for its effect the putting him in possession of the subject matter of dispute, by any of the means so often mentioned - by the adversary's, being disabled, by the deperition of necessary evidence from continuing his defence with any prospect of success, by his being altogether disabled, by the absolute want of the means of defraying the necessary expence, by his being driven from his defence by the terror inspired by the compound mass of affliction in the shape of the vexation and expence.