Tony’s Reviews > Uncommon Law: Being 66 Misleading Cases Revised and Collected in One Volume > Status Update

The Courts are the great bulwark against tyranny: and tyranny need not always take the shape of a king, a dictator, a general, or a nobleman: it may easily be disguised as a democratic assembly.

although the Courts of Justice are in principle open to all, the Highest Court ofJustice is not; and the majority of the citizens pass to their graves without ever beholding one of the most quaint and fascinating spectacles in London—the House of Lords sitting in judicature

It seemed not very long ago a monstrous thing that a man should bring a swiftly moving machine upon the highway—a machine that roared like a dragon at those who stood in its path, a machine that claimed a superior status to the walking citizen by virtue simply of its speed and strength. For this looked like the discredited doctrine that Might is Right. Yet this once monstrous thing is now a normal part of our lives.

The conduct of the accused was admittedly unusual; but novelty of behaviour is not necessarily a crime, though it may be evidence of imbecility.

And so, through the evasions of judges, the indolence of the Legislature, and the ignorance of the people, what began as an historical accident has gradually acquired the status of a moral principle. The student of the laws of England may rub his eyes in pained astonishment, but it is not the first time that such a thing has happened, and I do not suppose that it will be the last.

We do not say that a dog which bites savagely is harmless provided it barks loudly as well; on the contrary, a continually barking dog would be condemned as a nuisance though it never bit at all.

It is the genial habit of the State, for one reason or another, to assume that a citizen who takes his own life was out of his mind when he did so. This is partly due to the antiquated provisions concerning the burial of suicides, and in part is a form of conceit in the State, which likes to think that it so well disposes the lives of the citizens that any one who wishes to leave it must be mad.

The result is that the vote is generally regarded not as a precious instrument by which each man may do his country good, but as a weapon of offence or cajolery by which his country may be influenced to satisfy his material desires.

A row of motor-cars is no more entitled to obstruct the pedestrian than a row of pedestrians to obstruct the motorist. A man does not, when he acquires a pistol or a gun, acquire the right to menace or retard the movements of his fellow-citizens: neither does he acquire that right when he acquires a powerful motor-car.

It is sometimes backed by the impudent plea that the motorist pays a duty which is not borne by the pedestrian. Which is like saying that he who pays duties on liquor has a better right to enter a hotel than a teetotaller: or that he who pays tobacco-duty is entitled to blow smoke in the face of a non-smoker.