Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/138

 The Court of Star Chamber. jurymen could avail, and the integrity of the judges was above the shadow of a doubt. It was a court where the poor man need not hesitate to press his grievance, though the courts of his own neighborhood had re fused to aid him, — and whose censure the lordly wrong-doer held in awe while defying the judicial authority of the local tribunals. Its proceedings from the first were open and public; throngs attended its sittings and watched and listened as freely and with as little interference as the idle crowds that to-day resort to our courts when sensational cases are being tried. The causes were heard, argued, and determined sedately, solemnly and with dignity and deliberation. The defendants were summoned before it by due process of law; an information drawn with as great technical precision and in substantially the same form as a bill in equity apprised them of the charge they were called upon to meet, and from the earliest times, while the common law courts stubbornly refused to grant an accused any legal, aid whatever, the Star Chamber al-, lowed him, not one adviser, but always, of right, two counsel, and very often three or four whose active and full services he was permitted to enjoy. The career of the Star Chamber was not, however, one of uninterrupted justice. At times its authority was basely perverted. Great wrongs were there committed, and its oppressions, especially at times of political uneasiness and for purposes of state disci pline, were many. Of the wicked perse cutions which stained its memory during the later years of its existence I shall speak later. The Court of Star Chamber was the king's privy council, as it existed in former times, sitting in its judicial capacity. The sovereign prerogative of directly adminis tering justice, recognized and preserved in England from the most ancient times, and exercised in its amplest form in the Curia

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Regis, was in course of time, so far as it re lated to civil controversies and ordinary criminal matters, gradually distributed among other tribunals. The right of the king to administer justice in person, or through his high officers of state, in respect to offenses under the degree of capital, af fecting the government or wherein the com mon law was deficient, was however never delegated, but continued to be exercised by the council till the Long Parliament in 1640 declared that the occasion for the exercise of that right no longer existed. The council, even as early as the time of Edward III., when disposing of criminal business, usually held its sessions in that room of the palace called the " Star" chamber, and thus the name of the court was derived, — a designation that was ap plied to the end, and one that was recog nized in the books and statutes as its proper title. The history of this tribunal is full of interest. From the most remote antiquity the ad ministration of justice has been one of the highest, if not the greatest, prerogatives of the sovereigns of England.' Under the rule of the Saxons the first and principal place for the administration of justice was the ivittenagemote. Justice in both civil and criminal matters 1 Montesquieu sets forth the objections to the sovereign's acting as a judge in any cause within his realm, and then proceeds to show that equally grave reasons exist against his officers of state participating in judicial affairs: " It is likewise of very great inconveniency in monarchies for the ministers of the prince to be judges. We have still in stances of States where there are a great number of judges to determine fiscal controversies, and where the ministers notwithstanding (a thing almost incredible!) want like wise to determine them. Many are the reflections that here arise, but this single one will suffice for my purpose. There is in the very nature of things a kind of contrast be tween a prince's council and his courts of judicature. The king's council ought to be composed of a few persons and the courts of judicature of a great many. The reason is, in the former, things should be undertaken and pursued with a kind of warmth and passion, which can hardly be expected but from four or five men who make it "their sole business. On the contrary, in courts of judicature a cer tain coolness is requisite, and an indifference in some meas ure to all manner of affairs."