But merely providing a poor man with lawyers will not alone work the miracle. Money must be found to pay his witnesses and prepare his case, and this is even more necessary in civil cases than in the defence of prisoners where, as we shall see when we come to consider criminal matters, the State, whilst providing legal aid, has stopped short of providing what may be still more necessary, financial assistance for necessary evidence, some of which may be of an expert and expensive character wholly out of reach of a poor man.
Piers Plowman naturally threw the whole blame on the lawyers who went about, as he said:
Pleading the Law, for pennies and for pounds,
Unlocking their lips never for love of our Lord.
But I cannot for myself see why a lawyer or a doctor should work for nothing any more than a business man or an author, and, if we knew the truth, I expect we should find that old Piers himself invented his vision as much in the blessed hope of royalties as “for the love of our Lord.”
I do not want charity for the poor in our legal procedure, nor do I wish to see litigation multiplied by cheap remedies. On the contrary, I want every effort made to cut down litigation to a minimum, but when a lawsuit takes place I want it to be a fair fight and no favour, with each side equally well equipped for the fray.
CHAPTER X
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
The penal laws of the British Empire are, by foreign writers, charged with being too sanguinary in the cases of lesser offences. They hold that the punishment of death ought to be inflicted only for crimes of the highest magnitude; and philanthropists of our own nation have accorded with their opinion. Such persons as have had no opportunity of inquiring into the subject will hardly credit the assertion that there are above one hundred and sixty offences punished by death, or, as it is denominated, without benefit of clergy.