ow chicane to obstruct right!"[75] This
observation of Lord Mansfield applies equally to every means by which,
indirectly as well as directly, the cause may fail upon any other
principles than those of its merits. He thinks that all the resources of
ingenuity ought to be employed to baffle chicane, not to support it. The
case in which Lord Mansfield has delivered this sentiment is merely a
civil one. In civil causes of _meum et tuum_, it imports little to the
commonwealth, whether _Titus_ or _Maevius_ profits of a legacy, or
whether _John a Nokes_ or _John a Stiles_ is seized of the manor of
_Dale_. For which reason, in many cases, the private interests of men
are left by courts to suffer by their own neglects and their own want of
vigilance, as their fortunes are permitted to suffer from the same
causes in all the concerns of common life. But in crimes, where the
prosecution is on the part of the public, (as all criminal prosecutions
are, except appeals,) the public prosecutor ought not to be considered
as a plaintiff in a cause of _meum et tuum_; nor the prisoner, in such a
cause, as a common defendant. In such a cause the state itself is highly
concerned in the event: on the other hand, the prisoner may lose life,
which all the wealth and power of all the states in the world cannot
restore to him. Undoubtedly the state ought not to be weighed against
justice; but it would be dreadful indeed, if causes of such importance
should be sacrificed to petty regulations, of mere secondary
convenience, not at all adapted to such concerns, nor even made with a
view to their existence. Your Committee readily adopts the opinion of
the learned Ryder, that it would be better, if there were no such rules,
than that there should be no exceptions to them. Lord Hardwicke declared
very properly, in the case of the Earl of Chesterfield against Sir
Abraham Janssen, "that political arguments, in the fullest sense of the
word, as they concerned the government of a nation, must be, and always
have been, of great weight in the consideration of this court. Though
there be no _dolus malus_ in contracts, with regard to other persons,
yet, if the rest of mankind are concerned as well as the parties, it
may be properly said, it regards the public utility."[76] Lord Hardwicke
laid this down in a cause of _meum et tuum_, between party and party,
where the public was concerned only remotely and in the example,--not,
as in this prosecution, when the pol