“Oh, dear, no! Parke, B., asked, during the argument, if an innkeeper had a right to turn his guest out without a coat; or if he had a right to take off all his clothes, and send him away naked; and afterwards, in giving judgment, he clearly and distinctly answered his own queries, and said that an innkeeper had no power to strip a guest of his clothes; for if he had, then, if the innkeeper took the coat off his back, and that proved an insufficient pledge, he might go on and strip him naked, and that would apply either to a male or female——”
“That would be shocking!”
“The learned baron merely considered it utterly absurd, and that the idea could not be entertained for a moment. Another of the judges said that he had always understood the law to be that the clothes on the person of a man, and in his possession at the time, are not to be considered as goods to which the right of lien can properly apply; that the consequence of holding otherwise might be to subject parties to disgrace and duress in order to compel them to pay a trifling debt which, after all, was not due, and which the innkeeper had no pretence for demanding.”
“But, my dear fellow, we were speaking of the right of a landlord to keep the body of his guest.”
“To be sure we were. The Chief Baron said that if an innkeeper had a right to detain a guest for the non-payment of his bill, he had a right to detain him until the bill was paid, which might be for years or might be for aye; so that by the common law, a man who owed a small debt, for which he could not be imprisoned by legal process, might yet be detained by an innkeeper for life. Such a proposition my Lord Chief Baron said was monstrous, and, according to my lord Baron Parke, was startling.”[362]
“For my part, I think it is high time we rejoined the ladies,” said De Gex, with the air of a man satisfied with what he had heard.
“All right; throw law to the dogs, to improve upon the immortal bard.”
* * * * * *
Our return drive was as pleasant as that of the preceding day, except that we might well have exclaimed, in the words of the poet:
“How the dashed dry dust,
Nebulous nothing,
Nettled our nasal
Nostrils, you noodles!”