Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/534

 520 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY from the beginning of the century, the population, the wealth, the commerce of the country had been advancing by great strides, and the ancient bottles were but imperfectly adapted to hold the new wine. At a moment when the pecuniary enterprises of the kingdom were covering the world, when railways at home and steam upon the seas were creating everywhere new centres of industrial and commercial life, the Common Law Courts of the realm seemed constantly occupied in the discussion of the merest legal conundrums, which bore no relation to the merits of any controversies except those of pedants, and in the direction of a machinery that belonged already to the past. Frivolous and vexatious defences upon paper delayed the trial of a litigant's cause. Merchants were hindered for months and years from recov- ering their just dues upon their bills of exchange. Causes of action had become classified, as if they were so many Aris- totelian categories — a system which secured learning and precision, but at the risk of encouraging technicality ; and two causes of complaint could not be prosecuted in one and the same action unless they belonged to the same meta- physical ' form.' An action on a bond could not be joined with a claim upon a bill of exchange. A man who had been assaulted and accused of theft in the market-place of his town was obliged, if he wished redress for the double wrong, to issue two writs and to begin two litigations, which wound their course through distinct pleadings to two separate trials. If a surprise occurred at Nisi Prius or the assizes, the court was unable to adjourn the proceedings beyond a single day. Old fictions still survived, invented in bygone ages to assist justice — with no particular harm left in them, it is true, but which were well fitted to encourage the popular delusion that English law was a mass of ancient absurdity. In order to recover possession of any piece of land, the claimant began his action by delivering to the defendant a written statement narrating the fictitious adventures of two wholly imaginary characters called John Doe and Richard Roe, personages who had in reality no more existence than Gog and Magog. The true owner of the land, it was averred, had given John Doe a lease of the property in question, but John Doe had