Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/484

 Legal Reminiscences. be called upon for instruction in matters of law. Under this practice the independent action of the body and the absolute secrecy of its proceedings were secured. So invio lable was this secrecy and so important was its preservation regarded, that any disclosure of its proceedings was esteemed a crime of as high a grade as any form of perjury. Such a body was in fact as well as in name the Grand Inquest of the County, which presented no man for lucre or malice, and left no real criminal unpresented for any cause. As no such case ever occurred, if I should suggest how the court would have treated a motion to give some one leave to inspect the minutes of evidence before a Grand Jury, it would be the merest specu lation. Very certain I am that the attorney who ventured to make such a motion would have brought his service as an officer of the court to a sudden and violent termination. There must be, I suppose, some good reason for this change of practice and the estimate of the office of the Grand Jury which it implies. I do not know what that reason is, and I fear I am too old to learn. I believe, and probably always shall believe, that the Grand Jury system as I was taught and the judges of old time used to administer it, was and is the terror of criminals, the safeguard of the citizen, and one of the most invaluable elements of our jurisprudence. How many of our young lawyers have ever read the formidable Bill in Equity with which an unfortunate mortgagor was at tacked by a creditor who wished to foreclose his mortgage? 1 doubt whether I could now draw such a Bill of Complaint from memory, in the common case of the fore closure of a mortgage given to secure the payment of a promissory note. As well as I can remember, after setting out the execution and delivery of the note and mortgage, alleging its maturity and non payment,— all the facts which would seem to be necessary, — instead of simply conclud

447

ing with a prayer for the foreclosure of the mortgage or a sale of the property, the document wandered into regions of the imagination somewhat after this wise: — "But now so it is, may it please this honorable court, that the said defendant [the mortgagor], contriving and intending to deceive and defraud your orator [the complainant], and to cause him to lose the whole sum of money in the said promissory note mentioned, combining and con federating himself with divers evil-disposed persons, whose names are at present unknown to your orator, and whose names when discovered your orator prays may be inserted in this Bill of Complaint, with apt and proper words to charge them, doth pretend and give out in speeches sometimes that lie never signed the said promissory note, and that if his name appears thereon, it is a forgery, and at other times that the note was given for an usurious consideration, and is void, or that he has fully paid the same, and it ought to be delivered up to be cancelled, — whereas your orator charges, and so the said defendant and his con federates well know the facts to be, that he the defendant did sign and deliver the said note, that the same is not usurious, and that the same has not been paid nor any part thereof, and that all and every the facts and allegations set forth in the said Hill of Complaint are true according to the best knowledge, information, and belief of your orator. "And now forasmuch as your orator is remedi less in the premises by the strict rules of law, and cannot have any discovery or relief touching the matters aforesaid but in a court of equity, where subjects of this description are properly cognizable. "To the end, therefore, that equity may be done, your orator prays that your honor's writ of subpoena may be issued under the seal of this court directed to the said defendant and his con federates, commanding them and each of them under a sufficient penalty therein to be named to be and appear before this honorable court on the next rule day of said court, then and there upon their and each of their corporal oaths to make answer to this Bill of Complaint and all the allegations thereof as fully and particularly as if each of said allegations were herein again repeated, and he and each of them thereto specifically interrogated, and that he and each of them may