Jeremy Bentham

“ The rich man, the man who has time and money at command, he surely, if any, is the man to consume it litigiously and frivolously. No wonder however, if to a superficial glance, the poor should appear more litigious than he. There are more of the poor than of the rich: and to the eye of unreflecting opulence, the causes of the poor are all trivial ones.
We think of the poor in the way of charity, for to deal out charity gratifies not only benevolence, but pride. We think much of them in the way of charity, but we think little of them in the way of justice. ”

“ Outlawry is the engine applied by the law, as an instrument of compulsion to those who fly from civil justice. Outlawry is the engine employed as an instrument of punishment, against the most atrocious of malefactors. This self-same load of mischief, the financier with perfect heedlessness, but with unerring certainty, heaps on the head of unsuspected innocence. ”

“ Though justice is partly denied, and partly sold, the difference is certainly immense, betwixt selling it for the personal benefit of the king or of a judge, and selling it for the benefit of the public—betwixt selling it by auction, and selling it at a fixed price—betwixt denying it for the sake of forcing the sale of it, or denying it to a few obnoxious individuals, and denying it indiscriminately to the great majority of the people. ”

“ Taxes on law proceedings, so far then from being a check to litigation, are an encouragement to it—an encouragement to it in every sense in which it is mischievous and blameable. Would you really check litigation, and check it on both sides?—the simple course would be a sure one. When men are in earnest about preventing misconduct in any line, they annex punishment to misconduct in that line, and to that only: a species of misconduct which cannot be practised but as it were under the eye of the court, is of all others the easiest to cope with in the way of law. ”

“ I know what a groundless suit means—I know of no such thing as a frivolous one. No wrong that I know of can be a trivial one, which to him to whom it is done appears a serious one, serious to such a degree, as to make it worth his while to demand redress at the hand of justice.—Conduct is the test of feeling. I know of no right I have to set up any feelings of my own as the standard of those of my neighbour, in contradiction to a declaration of his, the truth of which is evidenced by his own conduct. What to one man again is trivial, to another man may be of high importance. ”

“ Were a three-penny stamp to be put upon every three-penny loaf, a man who had but three-penny to spend in bread, could no longer indeed get a three-penny loaf, but an obliging baker could cut him out the half of one. A tax on justice admits of no such retrenchment. The most obliging stationer could not cut a man out half a latitat nor half a declaration. Half justice, where it is to be had, is better than no justice: but without buying the whole weight of paper, there is no getting a grain of justice. ”

“ It is therefore more unjust, more tyrannical, to refuse to hear the demand of an ordinary working man to the amount of a shilling, than it would be to refuse to hear the demand of a Duke of Marlborough or Bedford, to the amount of £50. The legislator, who on the plea of checking litigation, or on any other plea, exacts of a working man as a preliminary to his obtaining justice, what that working man is unable to pay, does refuse to him a hearing, does in a word refuse him justice, and that as effectually and completely, as it is possible to refuse it. ”

“ How comes the tax to have been made choice of?—One cause we have seen already in another shape; the unscrutinized notion of its supposed tendency to check litigation: litigation, which where it stands for mischief, is the very mischief which the species of tax in question contributes with all its power to promote. ”

“ That all men should have equal rights, not only would be politically pernicious, but is naturally impossible: but I hope this will not be said of equal justice.
Trivial causes require no such factitious checks: to such causes were all expenses struck off that can be struck off, there are natural checks in abundance, that are unavoidable. There is the pain of disappointment: there is expense, of which a certain measure will every now and then be absolutely unavoidable: there is consumption of time, which to the working classes, that is, to the great majority of the people, is expense. ”

“ Will it be said that abolishing the taxes on justice would not answer the purpose, for that supposing them all abolished, justice would still remain inaccessible to the body of the people?—This would be to justify one abuse by another. The other obstacles by which the avenues to justice have been blocked up, constitute a separate head of abuse, from which I gladly turn aside, as being foreign to the present purpose. Take off law taxes all together, the number of those to whom justice will still remain inaccessible, would still, it must be confessed, be but too great. ”

“ Justice is the security which the law provides us with, or professes to provide us with, for every thing we value, or ought to value—for property, for liberty, for honour, and for life. It is that possession which is worth all others put together: for it includes all others. ”

“ May not ignorance with regard to the quantum and the source of the grievance, have contributed something to patience?—Unable to pierce the veil of darkness, that guards from vulgar eyes the avenues of justice, men know not how much of the difficulty of the approach is to be ascribed to art, and how much to nature. As the consumers of tobacco confound the tax on that commodity with the price, so those who borrow or would have wished to borrow the hand of justice, confound the artificial with the natural expense of hiring it. ”

“ Another injustice.—The poorer a man is, the more exposed he is to the oppression of which this supposed remedy against litigation is the instrument. But the poorer a man is, the less likely he is to be litigious. The less time a man has to spare, and the less a man can afford to expend his time (not to speak of money) without being paid for it, the less likely is he to expose himself to such a consumption of his time. ”

“ The power of adjudging as between costs and no costs, seldom discretionary:—that of apportioning, never:—nor that of fining beyond the amount of costs:—consequently nor that of punishing both parties where both have been to blame. Were a power to be given by statute to impose on a litigious suitor convicted of litigation, a fine to an amount not exceeding what the losing party pays now, whether he be blameable or blameless, it would be cried out against perhaps as a great power, too great to be given to judges without juries. ”

“ Indeed as both of two contending parties cannot in point of law be actually in the right, though either or both may think themselves so, the impediment cannot operate to the denial of justice, but it must operate to the prevention of groundless litigation at the same time. Prevent him who is in the right from instituting a suit, you prevent him who is in the wrong from defending one. But neither is litigation prevented, any further than as justice is denied. ”

“ May not a sort of instinctive fellow-feeling among the wealthy have contributed something, if not to the imposition, at least to the acquiescence? It is the wealthy alone, that either by fortune, situation, education, intelligence, or influence, are qualified to take the lead in legislation: and the characteristic property of this tax, is to be favourable to the wealthy, and that in proportion to their wealth. ”

“ The rich, were it from them that this great safeguard were withholden, have shields of their own to ward off the attacks of injury: the natural influence of wealth, the influence of situation, the power of connexion, the advantages of education and intelligence, which go hand in hand with wealth. The poor has but one strong hold, the protection of the law: and out of this the financier drives him without vouchsafing him a thought, in company with the herd of malefactors. ”

“ A man who pays to a tax on bread, may, indeed, by reason of such payment, be unable to get so much bread as he wants, but he will always get some bread, and in proportion as he pays more and more to the tax, he will get more and more bread. Of a tax upon justice, the effect may be, that after he has paid the tax, he may, without getting justice by the payment, lose bread by it: bread, the whole quantity on which he depended for the subsistence of himself and his family for the season, may, as well as any thing else, be the very thing for which he is obliged to apply to justice. ”

“ The power of keeping down those who are to be kept down, the power of doing wrong, and the more generous pride of abstaining from the wrong which it is in our power to do; advantages such as these, are too precious not to be grasped at with avidity by human weakness: and, as in a country of political liberty, and under a system of justice in other respects impartial, they can only be obtained by a blind and indirect route such as this, the inconvenience of travelling in it, finds on the part of those who are well equipped for it, the more patient an acquiescence. ”

“ When a man sees more or less of his property unjustly withholden from him, then is the time taken to call upon him for an extraordinary contribution. When the back of the innocent has been worn raw by the yoke of the oppressor, then is the time which the appointed guardians of innocence have thus pitched upon for loading him with an extraordinary burthen. [2] Most taxes are, as all taxes ought to be, taxes upon affluence–it is the characteristic property of this to be a tax upon distress.
A tax on bread, though a tax on consumption, would hardly be reckoned a good tax ”

“ Stamp-duties therefore are good taxes: and taxes on justice are all stamp-duties.—Thinking men look to consequences; they look to the feelings of the individuals affected: acting men look to the stamp: taxes on justice, taxes on property, taxes on consumption, are accordingly one and the same object to the optics of finance. ”

“ Here the incident which calls for contribution, is not only disputable, but by the supposition is actually in dispute. Nothing less than litigation can ascertain legally, whether litigation has been necessary. Have you engaged with a man for his paying you a sum of money whenever it shall become necessary for you to institute or defend yourself against a law-suit?—wait till the suit is at an end, and you will know whether he ought to pay you. ”

“ But even let the cause be trivial, and that to such a degree as to render the act of commencing the litigation blameable, the blame is never so great on the side of the party most favoured by the tax, as on the side of the party most oppressed by it. The party most oppressed is the complainant—the party who having suffered the injury, such as it is, claims or would claim satisfaction for it at the hands of justice. ”

“ Mark well, that of all sorts of men, it is the poor, and they the more certainly in proportion to their poverty, that are despoiled in this way of the protection of the law: the protection of the law, that inestimable jewel, which in the language of that very law is defined the citizen's universal and best birth-right: the poor and him that has none to help him, these are they to whom the help of the law is thus unfeelingly refused. ”

“ Litigation, though eventually it prove groundless—litigation, like any other course of conduct of which mischief is the result, is not therefore blamable: and where it is blamable, there is a wide difference whether it is accompanied with temerity only, or with consciousness of its own injustice. ”

“ Another cause may possibly be, the tendency which this sort of tax has to be confounded in the eye of an incurious observer, with other sorts, which are either the best of all, or next to the best. The best of all are taxes on consumption, because not only do they fall no where without finding some ability to pay them; but where necessaries are out of the question, they fall on nobody who has not the option of not paying them if he does not choose it. ”

“ The expense, the delay, and all the other grievances, which activity has heaped up, or negligence suffered to accumulate, are the prices which, according to Montesquieu, we must be content to pay for liberty and justice. A penny is the price men pay for a penny loaf: therefore why not two-pence? ”

“ The poor, on account of the ignorance and intellectual incapacity inseparably attached to poverty, are debarred generally—as perhaps it is necessary, were it only for their own sake, they should be universally—from the sweets of political power: but are not so many unavoidable inequalities enough, without being added to by unnecessary injustice? ”

“ Were a man even to sit down, and form a resolution to submit to every injury which he could not afford to prosecute for, and to plead guilty to every accusation which he could not afford to defend himself against, even at this price he could not save himself from the hardship of paying for justice, aggravated by the still greater hardship of not getting it. ”

“ Shopkeepers, tobacconists, glovers, are compact bodies—they can arm counsel—they come in force to the House of Commons. Suitors for justice have no common cause, and scarce a common name: they are every body and nobody—their business being every body's is nobody's. ”

“ The difference is, that any man may choose whether he will prick in the belt of the unlicensed sharper, nor are any but the rawest louts to be so deluded: whereas the wisest men may be inveigled in, as well as the stoutest dragged in, by the exalted and commissioned plunderers——so much surer is their game. For were the list of law taxes ever so familiar, and ever so easy to be understood, it is impossible for a man to know before hand, whether he has wherewithal to pay the bill, because it is impossible for him to know what incidents may intervene to lengthen it. ”

“ Were proceedings at law attended with no expense, a defendant who knew he had no merits, a defendant who was conscious that the demand upon him was a just one, would be deprived of what is in some cases his best chance for eluding justice, in others the absolute certainty of so doing: he would lose the strongest incentive he has to make the attempt. A defendant who means not to do justice unless compelled, and who knows that the plaintiff cannot compel him without having advanced a certain sum ”

“ Considered with a view to the treatment given to persons of this description, a court of justice is converted into exactly the same sort of place, as the shop of a baker would be, who having ranged his loaves along his window in goodly show to invite customers, should, instead of selling them the bread they asked for, first rob them of their money, and then turn them out of doors. To an unprejudiced imagination, the alliance between justice and finance, presents on this occasion a picture almost too near the truth to be termed an apologue. ”

“ In pecuniary cases, the smaller the sum in dispute, the less reserve is used in branding the conduct of the parties with the charge of litigation, of which, in such cases the reproach is apt to fall principally, if not exclusively, to the plaintiff's share. But the importance of the sum is altogether governed by the circumstances of the parties: the amount of it in pounds, shillings, and pence, shows nothing. One man's income may be a hundred, a thousand, four thousand times as great as that of another. In England there are men whose income exceeds £60,000 a year. ”