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objections
every possible presumption ought to be made which ingenuity can suggest. How disgraceful would it be to the administration of justice to allow chicane to obstruct right!"
76 This observation of Lord Mansfield applies equally to every means by which, indirectly as well as directly, the cause may fail upon any other principles than those of its merits. He thinks that all the resources of ingenuity ought to be employed to baffle chicane, not to support it. The case in which Lord Mansfield has delivered this sentiment is merely a civil one. In civil causes of
meum et tuum, it imports little to the commonwealth, whether
Titus or
Mævius profits of a legacy, or whether
John à Nokes or
John à Stiles is seized of the manor of
Dale. For which reason, in many cases, the private interests of men are left by courts to suffer by their own neglects and their own want of vigilance, as their fortunes are permitted to suffer from the same causes in all the concerns of common life. But in crimes, where the prosecution is on the part of the public, (as all criminal prosecutions are, except appeals,) the public prosecutor ought not to be considered as a plaintiff in a cause of
meum et tuum; nor the prisoner, in such a cause, as a common defendant. In such a cause the state itself is highly concerned in the event: on the other hand, the prisoner may lose life, which all the wealth and power of all the states in the world cannot restore to him. Undoubtedly the state ought not to be weighed against justice; but it would be dreadful indeed, if causes of such importance should be sacrificed to petty regulations, of mere secondary convenience, not at all adapted to such concerns, nor even made with a view to their existence. Your Committee readily adopts the opinion of the learned Ryder, that it would be better, if there were no such rules, than that there should be no exceptions to them. Lord Hardwicke declared very properly, in the case of the Earl of Chesterfield against Sir Abraham Janssen, "that political arguments, in the fullest sense of the word, as they concerned the government of a nation, must be, and always have been, of great weight in the consideration of this court. Though there be no
dolus malus in contracts, with regard to other persons, yet, if the rest of mankind are concerned as well as the parties, it may be properly said, it regards the public utility."
77 Lord Hardwicke laid this down in a cause of
meum et tuum, between party and party, where the public was concerned only remotely and in the example,—not, as in this prosecution, when the political arguments are infinitely stronger, the crime relating, and in the most eminent degree relating, to the public.
