The Sun.
London, England, 1828-05-24 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF Til PUBLIC JOURNALS.

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Too mitch praise cannot be given to Mr. Peel for
his Bill in respect of the recovering of Small Debts
tbst part especially where, for a debt of 101., or
under, the property, not the body, of the debtor, is
to be seized. We venture to suggest this improve-
ment—that the execution of no process shall be
valid, except it be served in the presence of thY
creditor. 'We would have all creditors present upon
the serving of a process; we would not have the
..;erving of it, as hitherto, left with. a solicitor, who
even hands it over to a sheriff's officer, the solicitor
himself not having any inclination for the °flirt of
serving process fin. debt. In nine cases ont of ten,
we believe that, if the creditor were present attic
serving of the process, the poverty-stricken ttppear-
once of the debtor, and his wife and children (if he
had any), would cause the creditor to forego the
profess. We are decidedly opposed to the system
of credit at all; as we think that the taking a man's
goods, in preference to his body, for debt, will be
snore summary-, and stare a debtor fuller in the face,
far as regards the consequences of getting into
debt, so we think that this Bill of Mr. Peel's will
diminish the credit system ; and on these grounds
principally we highly approve of it.—Morning
licre2M,

Chief Justice Best has again made strong ob-
ervations on the obscurity and prolixity of special
pleading in Courts of Law,. His Lordship says,
with great truth, that " the real point at issue is
too frequently lost sight of, while a multiplicity of
pleas and circumstances are introduced, which are
entirely irrelevant to the main question." This is
part of the craft and mystery of legal practice, which
most seriously demands reformation. Special plead-
ing, as it is at present exercised, is indeed the dis-
grace of law, and the greatest hindrance of justice.
Was it Fo originally ? By no means. The forms
of pleading were in earlier times simple, clear, and
concise. They were used for the purpose of giving
the Court a perspicuous view of the question at
issue, and for excluding tedious repetitions and
extraneous ?natter. The Courts are themselves to
blame for ever having allowed those plain and con-
cise forms to be departed from, and for having sanc-
tioned
the introduction of the curious intricacy, and
absurd fictions of modem pleading, which can have
no other effect than to involve the real merits of the
ease in verbal obscurity, thereby defeating the inten-
tions of justice, and loading the honest suitor with ad-
ditional vexation and expence. It is a remark-
able circumstance, that the very forms which
were originally invented, with the view of
facilitating the course of justice, have been convert-
ed into the means of obstructing and perverting the
whole Administration of the Law. Reason sug-
gests that all judicial and legal forms should be of
such a character as to give assistance to elucidate
the merits of a case, and not to keep them out of
view. But our modern special pleading is chiefly
directed to overlay the real question at issue, by a
mass of the veriest jargon that can be spread over
volumes of expensive folios, to defeat justice, and
heasease the profits of those who live by such abuse
of.thc process of law. As the Courts are answer-
able for allowing this vicious practice to creep in,
they have also the power of repressing it in a great
measure, by causing irrelevant matter and unneces-
sary verbiage to be struck out of pleadings, and
leaving the parties who adopt such a mode of elud-
ing the just claims of others to pay the costs. On
several occasions Chief Justice Best has expressed
from the bench his strong reprobation of the absurd
fictions stuffed into declarations and pleas, which are
abominable frauds upon justice and the pockets of the
suitors--but a practice from which great gain is de-
rived, and censequently in the support of which many
are interested, is not easily put down. It is no
wonder that words and fictions should be multiplied
n pleadings, seeing that the legal artificers who
manufacture those things charge so much a page or
folio, consisting of a certain number of words, and,
of course, no word can come amiss to them which
tends to swell their bill of casts. But unless all the
Judges unite to discountenance such unworthy prac-
tice, the nuisance cannot be abated--or at least not
considerably diminished. If one Judge holds that
to be right and fair, which another considers to be
degrading to the profession, there can be no real re-
formation. A special-pleading Judge is incapable,
from long habit, of appreciating the value of admi-
nistering direct and substantial justice. He is more
delighted with his own " astuteness" in " turning
round" a suitor on a point offietion or form, than
he would be by separating truth front the web of
chicanery in which artful practitioners entangle it.
The great end of law, we presume, is to administer
justice—the object of modern special-pleading is to
obstruct and defeat it. The latter substitutes forma
for merits, and words for things. It introduces a
blind attachment to technicalities, which extinguishes
the sense of right and wrong. We see at present
no effectual remedy for the evil, but that which it is
in the power of the Legislature to apply.--Ibid.