“I appeal to you, gentlemen, is not such a suitor sacred in all wise and good men's minds? Is he not defendant as well as plaintiff? Why, his stake is enormous compared with the nominal defendant's; and, if I know right from wrong, to postpone his trial a fourth time would be to insult Divine justice, and trifle with human misery, and shock the common sense of nations.”
The doctor's pen neither clipped the words nor minced the matter, you see. Reading this the water came into Alfred's eyes. “Ah, staunch friend,” he said, “how few are like you! To the intellectual dwarfs who conspire with my oppressors, Hardie v. Hardie is but a family squabble. Parvis omnia parva.” Mr. Compton read it too; and said from the bottom of his heart, “Heaven defend us from our friends! This is enough to make the courts decline to try the case at all.”
And, indeed, it did not cure the evil: for next term another malade affidavitaire was set up. Speers to wit. This gentleman deposed to having come over on purpose to attend the trial; but having inadvertently stepped aside as far as Wales, he lay there stricken with a mysterious malady, and had just strength to forward medical certificate. On this the judge in spite of remonstrance, adjourned Hardie v. Hardie to the summer term. Summer came, the evil day drew nigh: Mr. Heathfield got the venue changed from Westminster to London, which was the fifth postponement. At last the cause came on: the parties and witnesses were all in court, with two whole days before them to try it in.
Dr. Sampson rushed in furious. “There is some deviltry afloat,” said he. “I was in the House of Commons last night, and there I saw the defendant's counsel earwigging the judge.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Compton, “such suspicions are ridiculous. Do you think they can talk of nothing but Hardie v. Hardie?”
“Mai—dearr sirr—my son met one of Heathfield's clerks at dinner, and he let out that the trile was not to come off. Put this and that together now.”
“It will come off,” said Mr. Compton, “and in five minutes at farthest.”
In less than that time the learned judge came in, and before taking his seat made this extraordinary speech:
“I hear this cause will take three days to try; and we have only two days before us. It would be inconvenient to leave it unfinished; and I must proceed on circuit the day after to-morrow. It must be a remanet: no man can do more than time allows.”
Plaintiff's counsel made a feeble remonstrance; then yielded. And the crier with sonorous voice called on the case of Bread v. Cheese, in which there were pounds at stake, but no principle. Oh, with what zest they all went into it; being small men escaping from a great thing to a small one. Never hopped frogs into a ditch with more alacrity. Alfred left the court and hid himself, and the scalding tears forced their way down his cheeks at this heartless proceeding: to let all the witnesses come into court at a vast expense to the parties: and raise the cup of justice to the lips of the oppressed, and then pretend he knew a trial would last more than two days, and so shirk it. “I'd have made that a reason for sitting till midnight” said poor Alfred, “not for prolonging a poor injured man's agony four mortal months.” He then prayed God earnestly for this great postponer's death as the only event that could give him back an Englishman's right of being tried by his peers, and so went down to Oxford broken-hearted.