“I think,” said I, “you had better take your ground again, Mr. Eustace Stowell, for I tell you I did make this offer before, and may be you don’t like so plump a contradiction. If not, I’m at your service. Here is a letter under your own hand, returning the bills and declining to receive them. See, read that!” continued I, handing it him.
“Bless me!” said he, “there must be some great misunderstanding in this business. All’s right and honourable. I hope the whole will be forgotten, Mr. Martin.”
“Certainly, Mr. Stowell,” replied I: “but I trust you’ll not be so hard to please about your interest money in future, when it’s not convenient to a gentleman to pay it.”
He laughed, and we all four stepped into the same carriage, returned the best friends possible, and I never heard any thing irritating about his interest money afterward.
This case, however, was only a simple one on the money counts—a mere matter of assumpsit, in which all the gross and ungentlemanly legal expressions used in law declarations on assumpsits were totally avoided—such as “intending thereby to deceive and defraud:”—language which, though legal, a Galway gentleman would as soon eat his horse as put up with from his equal—though he would bear it from a shopkeeper with sovereign indifference. When such a one, therefore, was sued in assumpsit for a horse or so by a gentleman, the attorney never let his client read the law declaration—the result of which would be injurious to two of the parties at least, as one of the litigants would probably lose his life, and the attorney the litigation. The foregoing cause was conducted with as much politeness and decorum as could possibly be expected between four high well-bred persons, who, not having “the fear of God before their eyes,” but, as law indictments very properly set forth, “being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil,” had congregated for the avowed purpose of committing or aiding in one or more wilful and deliberate murders.
I must here observe that, in addition to the other advantages this mode of proceeding between gentlemen had over that of courts of justice, a certain principle of equity was understood to be connected with it. After a gentleman was regularly called out, and had duly fought the challenger respecting any sum of money, whether the trial ended in death or not, after a single shot the demand was extinguished and annulled for ever: no man can be sued twice for the same debt. Thus, the challenger in a money case stood in rather an unpleasant situation—as, exclusive of the chance of getting a crack, the money was for ever gone, whether his adversary lived or died—unless, indeed, the acceptor, being a “gentleman every inch of him,” might feel disposed to waive his “privilege.”
But this short, cheap, and decisive mode of terminating causes was not confined to simple money counts; it extended to all actions at law and proceedings in equity. The grand old procrastinators of Irish courts—demurrers and injunctions—were thus dissolved or obviated by a trigger, in a shorter time than the judges took to put on their wigs and robes. Actions also of trover, assault, trespass, detenu, replevin, covenant, &c. &c. were occasionally referred to this laudable branch of jurisprudence with great success, seldom failing of being finally decided by seven o’clock in the morning.
The system was also resorted to by betters at cock-fights, horse-races, or hurlings; as well as on account of breaches of marriage-contracts with sisters, nieces, or cousins; or of distraining cattle, beating other gentlemen’s servants, &c. &c.: but none were more subject to the trigger process than high sheriffs when their year was over, if they had permitted their subs to lay on (as they called it) such things as executions, fieri facias, or scire facias, haberes, &c.; or to molest the person, property, or blood relations, of any real and spirited gentleman in his own bailiwick, or out of it.
The high sheriff being thus, by the laws of custom, honour, and the country gentlemen of Ireland, subject to be either shot or horsewhipped, or forced to commit a breach of public duty, very fortunately discovered an antidote to this poison in the person of his sub-sheriff—an officer generally selected from the breed of country attorneys. Now, it was an invariable engagement of the sub that he should keep, guarantee, and preserve his high from all manner of injury and annoyances. But as it was by common accord decided, that a sub-sheriff could not possibly be considered a gentleman, none such would do him the honour of fighting him. Yet, being necessitated to adopt some mode of keeping the high out of the fangs of fire-eaters, and himself from a fracture by the butt-end of a loaded whip, or the welts of a cutting one, or of having his “seat of honour” treated as if it were a foot-ball, the sub struck out a plan of preventing any catastrophe of the kind—which plan, by aid of a little smart affidavit, generally succeeded extremely well in the superior courts.