1828. ] Welsh Jurisprudence. 477 
of taking into consideration the practice of the County Courts, was a 
resolution—“ That we have observed with considerable alarm the increase 
of litigation, destructive of the public tranquillity, and highly injurious 
‘to the prosperity of the county of Pembroke: That not only have the 
legal charges been of late greatly increased, but repeated and cruel 
instances have come to our knowledge of suits being carried on in the 
most expensive manner that legal ingenuity could suggest for the reco- 
very of the smallest.debts, or in obtaining redress for the most trifling 
injuries, thereby making the law of the land the instrument of the grossest 
oppression.” 7 
On the subject of juries we do not find much in print ; but there is 
an old story in circulation of a Welsh trial, in which a prisoner, tried 
for forgery, was brought in guilty of sheep stealing, as the foreman 
declared, to save the criminal from being hanged ; and another. in which 
a witness, who had prevaricated in his evidence, is represented as being 
brought in guilty instead of the culprit. “How say ye, gentlemen of 
the jury, guilty or not guilty ?”— Guilty, my lord, against the witness !” 
The act of the present reign affected to improve the character of the 
jurymen by giving them a qualification. Upon what principle of phre- 
nology it is that a man’s brains expand with the expansion of his acres, 
we have not yet had the good fortune to be instructed, though the 
English jury law seems to proceed upon its assumption. We have yet, 
however, to see how much the verdicts of Welsh jurymen will be 
improved under the operation of this wisdom-bestowing act. 
Such is the paradise of law which English government has provided 
for Wales. But the “labours of love” have not stopped with the esta- 
blishment of the paradise ; bars must needs be devised to keep its happy 
inmates within its walls. Fearful lest the Welsh suitor should escape 
with his cause into any neighbouring English county, which such par- 
tial, ignorant, incompetent judges, as my Lord Tenterden, or Mr. Jus~ 
tice Bayley, might happen to be taking in their circuits, the legislature 
has enacted, “ That all actions upon the case for words, action of debt, 
trespass, or the case of assault and battery, and other personal actions 
(which, be it observed, comprehend the greater part of all the actions 
brought) which shall be brought in any of His Majesty’s Courts of 
Record out of the Principality of Wales, and the debt in damages, found 
_ by the jury, shall not amount to the sum of fifty pounds ; and it shall 
_ appear that the cause of action arose in Wales, and that the defendant 
‘was resident there at the time of the commencement of the action, a 
i judgment of nonsuit shall be entered against the plaintiff, and he shall 
pay to the defendant his costs of suit.” This is confining the Welshmen 
_ in their paradise with a witness to it. Unluckily, however, like Rasselas 
in the happy valley, they do not seem quite so contented with their 
_ situation as some people may imagine they ought to be; though, for 
_ ourselves, we confess we are not much surprised that the dissatis- 
_ faction which appeared to the Committee of 1818, to be “ felt in dif- 
_ ferent parts of Wales, with the existing state of the courts, by means of 
which justice is there administered,” should survive the miserable abor= 
tion which was provided as a remedy—the act of 1824. But when a 
country begins to mistrust either the purity or the sufficiency of its 
courts, it is high time, if it be not sought, to let it waste itself into “a 
voice crying in the wilderness,” to put all considerations of power 
and patronage aside, and yield to the national lament. It is atrocious 
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