Page:Borden v. State ex rel. Robinson.pdf/20

538 in England from time to time for the protection of this class of judicial officers; such as for the limitation of suits against them, provision that they must be previously notified of an intention to proceed against them, declaring that without such notice there shall be a non suit or nol. pros.; that such suits shall be brought in particular localities; that these justices may tender amends; that criminal information shall not be allowed against them except under given circumstances; and others of like character, all designed to abate the rigor of the rule that made them trespassers and liable in most cases practically for the want of intelligence and learning and the errors of an honest judgment.

Now, in order to show the paramount sway of the first of these two great rules of the common law we will refer to its operation in several cases, where it has been made to override the supposed general rule that every court must have jurisdiction both of the subject matter of the suit and of the person of the defendant, otherwise its judgments in personam will be a nullity. As one of these instances take the case of Priggs vs. Adams already cited (from 2 Salk. 674.) There the act of Parliament erecting the court of conscience in Bristol, provided that if any action shall be brought in any of the courts of Westminster upon any cause of action arising in Bristol and it appeared upon trial to be under forty slnllings, that no judgment should be entered for the plaintiff and "if one be entered it should be void," nevertheless the court of King's Bench held that the judgment in the Common Pleas in this case for five shillings on such a cause of action was not a nullity, but was only voidable by plea on error because the Common Pleas was a superior court. In this case the want of jurisdiction of the subject matter was upon the face of the record and yet the judgment was held not to be a nullity. And it would be no answer to this to show any rule of pleading that might be supposed to have prevented the nullity of the judgment because any such rule would necessarily presuppose that the judgment was voidable only for the reason that "it is a universal rule in regard to all things that are void