Montana labor news., 1936-11-12
SELLING JUSTICE
BY The DOLLAR

Therefore 1t is PLAN tnal ONSE
SOCIETY HAD REACHED THE
POINT WHERE THE ACCRETION
OF WEALTH CAUSES COMPLEX
RELATIONS, a central power OF
some sort became inevitable, MAIN
TANNED by the money of those who
mad grown rich, WHICH SHOULD
HAVE THE ENERGY TO GEORGE
A DEBTOR, to PROTECT the I'M
armed man from the armed man,
and to take charge of the property
of women and children. That is to
say, ECONOMIC POWER sought
and found expression, through the
sovereign, in WRITS OF MANDA-
MUS and INJUNCTION issued by
the prerogatiye courts, and in ma
chinery for administering trusts.
From the accession of Henry II
~ onward for several centuries OF
evolution, though perhaps slow, was
regular, keeping pace with the rise
of business class as distinguished
from the martial class. The first
phenomenon was the development
of an energetic executive largely by
what we call the sale of justice, O
by the sale of privileges relating to
the administration of justice. The
traders began by the abolition of the
archaic law in the towns, and by
the purchase of exemptions from
feudal customs, and the right to
erect tribunals. Then contracts were
made with the Sovereign for gen
eral process. The Jews and others
went to the King, either with pres
ents, as in 1889, wherewith to buy
protection from violence, or else
with a bond, the obligation Of which
had been broken. In the first in
stance the King did what he could,
sometimes, as at York where the
Sheriff was with the mob, little
enough; and in the second he took
the bond, and charged half of what
he extracted from the debtor for his
trouble.
For possibly a century after the
accession of Henry II the procedure
seems to have been irregular. The
judges were not so much profess
sional lawyers as administrative Of
ficers whom the King removed for
disobedience or perhaps for less
allowable reasons. If the King want
ed a Writ for any especial purpose
he ordered one to his liking, as he
might have ordered a pair of shoes,
and a clerk in chancery wrote it,
and the judge made a decree to fit
it, and it was sent down to the
sheriff to execute if he chose, or pos
sibly to leave u~nexecuted. AS a
matter of fact, Occur de Lion had
much trouble with his sheriffs, and
was constantly dismissing them and
selling their offices to others. In
deed, under Richard, it would appear
as if the sheriffs did much as they
pleased, provided in some way they
could show that the Crown would
be Unidentified.
OF COURSE THE BARONS PRO
TESTED VIGOROUSLY, for, if
JUSTICE COULD be sold to the
highest bidder, their days were num-
bered. In 1915, in MAGMA CHARTA,
they made John promise that he
would do so no more, and in 1914,
a generation later, they raised a
great cutlery, insisting that the king
dom must be served by an honest
chancellor who would sell no new
writs, but would adhere to ancient
usage. Notwithstanding, which, the
volume of business swelled, and as
its value rose, trained men handled
it. By the middle of the thirteenth
century the judges formed a class
apart, and as they became special
lied and held office by a more stable
tenure, they tended to follow prece-
dents instead of obeying orders, fall
ing more and more under the influ-
ence of the great magnates of their
time, as judges will.