Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/197

Rh of a prison-cell, and the subjection to prison-rules, on the mere suspicion that he has committed a murder?"

"The magistrates held that the rules allowed them to make no distinctions. You would not introduce class-legislation into prison-discipline?"

"I remember that is one of the excuses; and I cheerfully give credit to this endeavor to treat all classes alike. I do so the more cheerfully because this application of the principle of equality differs much from those which you ordinarily make—as when, on discharging some of your well-paid officials who have held sinecures, you give them large pensions, for the reason, I suppose, that their expensive styles of living have disabled them from saving any thing; while, when you discharge dock-yard laborers, you do not give them compensation, for the reason, I suppose, that out of weekly wages it is easy to accumulate a competence. This, however, by the way. I am here concerned with that action of your political system which makes it an aggressor on citizens, whether rich or poor, instead of a protector. The instances I have given are but trivial instances of its general operation. Law is still a name of dread, as it was in past times. My legal adviser, being my friend, strongly recommends me not to seek your aid in recovering property fraudulently taken from me; and I perceive, from their remarks, that my acquaintances would pity me as a lost man if I got into your Court of Equity. Whether active or passive, I am in danger. Your arrangements are such that I may be pecuniarily knocked on the head by some one who pretends I have injured his property. I have the alternative of letting my pocket be picked by the scamp who makes this baseless allegation in the hope of being paid to desist, or of meeting the allegation in Chancery, and there letting my pocket be picked, probably to a still greater extent, by your agencies. Nay, when you have, as you profess, done me justice by giving me a verdict and condemning the scamp to pay costs, I find I may still be ruined by having to pay my own costs if he has no means. To make your system congruous throughout, it only needs that, when I call him to save me from the foot-pad, your policeman should deal me still heavier blows than the foot-pad did, and empty my purse of what remains in it."

"Why so impatient? Are we not going to reform it all? Was it not last session proposed to make a Court of Appellate Jurisdiction by appointing four peers with salaries of 7,000 each? And has there not been brought forward this session, even quite early, a Government-measure for facilitating appeals; so that the final judgments may not be postponed from year to year? Give us a little time, and we will make these renewals of litigation much easier."

"Thanks in advance for the improvement. When I have failed to ruin myself by a first suit, it will be a consolation to think that I can complete my ruin by a second with less delay than heretofore.