Atrocious Judges : Lives of Judges Infamous as Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression
John Campbell
Atrocious Judges : Lives of Judges Infamous as Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression
ADVERTISEMENT
The text of the following Book of Judges has been derived from Lord Campbell’s Lives of the Chief Justices, and Lives of the Chancellors, with only a few verbal alterations for the sake of connection, some transpositions, the omission of some details of less interest to the American reader, and the insertion of a few paragraphs, enclosed in brackets, thus [ ].
Most biographers have been arrant flatterers. Lord Campbell is a distinguished member of that modern school, which holds that history is of no dignity nor use, except so far as it is true; and that the truth is to be told at all hazards and without reserve. Hitherto social and political position, obtained no matter by what means, has in general secured not only present but future reputation. It can hardly fail to be a serious check upon those who struggle for distinction to understand, that, however they may cheat or dazzle their contemporaries, they must expect to encounter from posterity a Rhadamantine judgment.
The object of the present work, prepared as it is in the interest of justice and freedom, and designed to hold up a mirror to magistrates now sitting on the American bench, in which “to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very life and body of the time his form and pressure,” will, I hope, induce Lord Campbell to pardon the liberty I have ventured to take with his writings.
R.В H.
Boston, November 20, 1855.
INTRODUCTION
Hume observes, in his History of England, that “among a people who lived in so simple a manner as the Anglo-Saxons, the judicial power is always of greater importance than the legislative.” The same comparison will hold good even in communities far more advanced in civilization than the Anglo-Saxons. It has indeed been well said that the great end of the complicated machinery of the existing British government is to get twelve men into a jury box. It might even be laid down as a general principle that the freedom or servitude of a people will mainly depend upon the sort of administration of justice which they have – especially of criminal justice.
The whole course of British history will serve to justify this observation, since it has not been so much by the aid of mercenary soldiers, as by the assistance of lawyers and judges, that tyranny has sought to introduce itself into that country. It is in the history of the English courts, still more than in the history of the English Parliament, that we are to trace the origin and growth of those popular rights and of that idea of public liberty, propagated from England to America, and upon which our Anglo-American free institutions are mainly founded.
The origin of British liberty, by an ancient, constant, and affectionate tradition, has uniformly been traced back to the times of the Anglo-Saxons. It was, however, by judicial, far more than by legislative institutions, that among those progenitors of ours private rights and public liberty were guarantied.
The smallest political subdivision among the Anglo-Saxons was the tything, (teothing,) consisting of ten families, the members of which were responsible for the good conduct of each other. The head man of this community, denominated tything-elder, (teothing ealdor,) seems to have acted as a kind of arbitrator in settling disputes about matters of a trifling nature; but whether he had actually a court for administering justice does not appear. Next in order came the hundred, (hundrede,) or, as it was called in the north of England, the wapentake, in its original constitution consisting of ten tythings, or a hundred families, associated together by a similar bond of mutual responsibility. Its head man was called the hundred’s elder, (hundredes ealdor,) or simply reeve, (gerefa,) that being the generic term for the officer of any