ABSTRACT
THE woman who had killed her child recovered sufficiently to stand her trial, and as she confessed her guilt there could be no doubt about her sentence. But the case was not likely to be decided before the end of the year, at earliest; for at this period the slightest legal question could not be settled without months of weary waiting, and men grew grey before their larger lawsuits were brought to an issue. This was due to two causes. One was the extremely complicated system of judicature beneath which England groaned at the time, a system over-elaborated and confused by muddle-witted legislators of the past, and clogged with the ceremonious officialism that attends old civilizations—to their cost! The other was owing to the fact that the longer an action at law could be made to last the more money dropped into legal coffers. When Goethe said that ‘laws descend like inveterate hereditary disease,’ he must have realized that, just as physical disease feeds the doctor, so do the wrongs and injustice of his fellow-men feed the lawyer. And as in England, at this time, men thought more of amassing wealth for themselves than either curing disease or righting wrong, there existed a very prevalent opinion to the effect that ‘law is not justice.’
