JB/031/193/001

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1828 Sept. 10
Blackstone

Thus it is, that to those by whom and of course for whom
laws under Law as it is, laws are and ever have been
made it was convenient and agreable that (proper exception excepted) Defendants
should be subjected to prehension; not so, that Witness
should.

This difference would not have been so considerable –
no – nothing near to considerable were it not for the grave consequence
given to prehension – the consequence in respect of length of
confinement. Beheaded for ab debt or peccadillo, debt or
no debt, peccadillo or no peccadillo a man remains endurance
durance, for winter, for half a year or a whole one according to circumstances which have nothing to do
with the matter according as the judicatory (the Court says Law as it is) is called by such a
such a name, or the scene of action was lay at this or that distance
from the metropolis – seat of decision judicature. So
far so good: men were used to it: higher orders, to act it;
higher and lower orders to suffer it: everything was as it should be.
But witnesses – thus to deal with witnesses? that (as a Lord
Liverpool might have said) would have been too bad: Honorable
Gentlemen, Noble Lords, Right Revered Lords, Most Revered
Lords – keep such men in a Jail for six months and twelve
months together, for nothing at all, at the pleasure of every Attorney
that can get a man to pay him for it? The very idea imagination of
such a thing is enough to turn one giddy.

Well but (says say our unlearned reader, and has been saying
so for those some several pages back – be the man a defender witness
be the man a defendant, keep him in jail for a twelve month
together without hearing him? what's the use of that to
us, my Lord Judge – what's the use of that. When a
man is taken up whether it be to make answer to a demand,
made upon himself – whether it be to give evidence as to a demand
made upon another man, what, the reason he can not why can not he as well be
brought taken before to your Lordship in Court, as to a Jailor, or
the Keeper of a Spunging House. Had the demand been made before a
Justice of the Peace, the man defendant
as soon as taken up, would
have been taken before the
Justice – sent to a Jail in
the first instance, or to in any
case to a Spunging House.

Identifier: | JB/031/193/001"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 31.
Date_1	1828-09-10	Marginal Summary Numbering	not numbered
Box	031	Main Headings	civil code
Folio number	193	Info in main headings field	blackstone
Image	001	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	c13 / c4
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	b&m 1828
Marginals	richard doane	Paper Producer	arthur moore; richard doane
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year	1828
Notes public		ID Number	9879
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