Wesley Corpus

But there is a Magistrate whose peculiar office it is to redress the injured and oppressed. Go, then, and make trial of this remedy; go, and tell your case to the Lord Chancellor. Hold; you must go on regularly; you must tell him your case in form of law, or not at all. You must therefore file a bill in Chancery, and retain a Lawyer belonging to that court. “But you have already spent all you have; you have no money.” Then I fear you will have no justice. You stumble at the threshold. If you have either lost or spent all, your cause is nought; it will not cven come to a hearing. So, if the oppressor has secured all that you had, he is as safe as if you was under the earth. 1. Now, what an amazing thing is this ! The very greatness of the villany makes it beyond redress! But suppose he that is oppressed has some substance left, and can go through all the Courts of Justice, what parallel can we find among Jews, Turks, or Heathens, for either the delays or the expense attend ing it? With regard to the former, how monstrous is it, that in a suit relating to that inheritance which is to furnish you and your family with food and raiment, you must wait month after month, perhaps year after year, before it is determined whether it be yours or not ! And what are you to eat or to wear in the mean time? Of that the Court takes no cognizance! Is not this very delay (suppose there were no other grievance attend ing the English course of law) wrong beyond all expression? contrary to all sense, reason, justice, and equity? A capital cause is tried in one day, and finally decided at once. And “is the life less than meat; or the body of less concern than rai ment?” What a shameless mockery of justice, then, is this putting off pecuniary causes from term to term, yea, from year to year! With regard to the latter: A man has wronged me of a hun dred pounds. I appeal to a Judge for the recovery of it.