JUDICIAL MALVERSATION
The latest proceedings against a judge for malversation in his office were in the case of the Earl of Macclesfield, lord chancellor, who was impeached in the year 1725 of high crimes and misdemeanours, found guilty, and sentenced to a fine of £30,000. The standard of public principle must be miserably low when those who are appointed to distribute justice are the first to pollute the pure fountains from which it ought to issue; and yet in our history we find innumerable instances of this practice. The concluding words of chapter twenty-nine of Magna Charta are: “Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus aut differemus rectum vel justitiam,”-a clause calculated to prevent abuses in the Crown. Yet for centuries after it was usual to pay fines for delaying law proceedings, even to the extent of the defendant’s life. Sometimes they were exacted to expedite process and to obtain right; in other cases the parties litigant offered part of what they were to recover to the Crown. Madox, in his invaluable history of the Exchequer.
