344 APPENDIX. [No. XXVII. 



In our present social state, there is no greater damage that a man can 

 receive than a false attack in law or Chancery. The immense expense of 

 lawyers, counsel, and witnesses the harass of mind and damage to repu- 

 tation are excessive ; and yet there is no remedy against such severe 

 injury. The man attacked must lose. He can never get more than a 

 portion of his costs, and yet at this moment no remedy is provided. 



Wherever we turn, these cases of injury and gross injustice crowd 

 upon our view ; and though they can never be got at in their exact detail, 

 by a variation of names, circumstances, and place, a few specimens of 

 extortion may be safely glanced at for the purpose of considering the 

 general phase of the subject. 



Mr. Bolus, a medical practitioner, sends in his bill of 20 to Mr. 

 Crafty, who apparently was a respectable tradesman. The answer was, 

 " You maltreated me ; I shall try an action against you, unless you give 

 me 1000." Terrified and alarmed, Mr. Bolus consulted a London surgeon, 

 who begged him to resist the claim, as he treated the case very skilfully. 

 A writ was served; the case was carried to the eve of trial; the trial 

 was countermanded. The medical man was harassed for months by the 

 charge, when suddenly Mr. Crafty becomes a bankrupt without assets. If 

 the lawyer, who had done lightly to effect a compromise, had been liable, 

 this attempted extortion could not have been perpetrated. 



Mr. Faith consulted Mr. Quack upon a secret malady. Mr. Quack 

 sent in a bill of 700, carried the case to London, at great cost, to the eve 

 of trial, when it was abandoned, and it was discovered that Mr. Quack had 

 evaporated to America. Surely the lawyer here was as bad as Mr. Quack. 

 Several in London live by this method. 



Great cruelties are practised under the Patent Laws. In a village the 

 greater part of the people made a respectable but slender living by turning 

 black buttons into white by a chemical process. One fine morning, whilst 

 their operations proceeded peaceably and quietly, a writ was served upon 

 each by Mr. Whiting, a patentee of a similar process. What was to be 

 done ? The whole village was in consternation. They thought they were 

 all ruined. In this dilemma they sent one of their body to London to 

 consult a scientific man who had written the book they consulted upon 

 turning black buttons into white. This gentleman was interested in their 

 case, and told them that they did not infringe the patent, but that they 

 must put in an appearance to the writ. With difficulty they got together 

 5, which they took to a solicitor, when no further proceedings were taken. 

 Here were men harassed for months by the bold niano3uvre of Whiting, 

 which would unquestionably have succeeded but for the kind gratuitous 

 advice of the scientific man. 



In the same way the pioneers of photography were greatly harassed 

 by Mr. Sunshine, who claimed to be the original inventor and patentee of 

 sun-portraits. Now Mr. Sunshine was a wealthy man, and had great 

 possessions in Moonland, and was very ambitious of a baronetcy, which 

 he is supposed to have lost from his practice. Why should he not 

 have been made to pay for the great injury he inflicted upon the poor 

 photographers ? 



Public companies are peculiarly exposed to this kind of fraud. The 

 directors, or some of them, in the Waste Land Regeneration Company 



