Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/551

 16. BOWEN: THE VICTORIAN PERIOD 537 Courts. After their successful termination, you might have applied to Parliament for a Divorce Act, and your counsel and your witnesses would have been heard at the Bar of the House." " But, my lord," pleaded the culprit, " I cannot afford to bring actions or obtain Acts of Parliament; I am only a very poor man." " Prisoner," said Mr. Justice Maule, " it is the glory of the law of England that it knows no dis- tinction between the rich and the poor." The present Divorce Court, whatever the social evil it has revealed, at least has brought within reach of the humble that which was supposed to be for the public advantage in the case of the rich. The nation has been fortunate in this, that a branch of justice so difficult has been administered in succession by presidents of singular personal dignity, wisdom, and discretion. To the practical arbitrament of the Courts of Common Law was transferred, after no long interval, another class of cases of much importance to the State — the trials of con- troverted election petitions. At the time when her Majesty succeeded to the throne, the cognisance of such matters be- longed exclusively to the House of Commons. Through a moral blindness which party politics occasionally encourage, the election committees of the House had become a tribunal as untrustworthy as if they had been pecuniarily corrupt. The composition of each committee proceeded upon strictly party lines. On the day appointed for the ballot the friends of the respective litigants were collected by a " whip," Out of a House of a hundred members, thirty-three names were drawn, and these again reduced to eleven by repeated chal- lenges — a process facetiously known as " knocking out the brains of the committee." The ^'arliament court so chosen had often to decide difficult matters of law, on which the validity of votes or the qualification of voters or of candi- dates in former days might depend; often to determine issues of fact as to bribery or intimidation. In the result, the sitting members were seated or unseated with more regard to the colour of their politics than to any merits of the case. " The tribunal," says Mr. Charles Buller in 1836, " is selected under a system by which those who have any professional acquirements, admitted abilities, proved industry or marked