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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

30.: PLEADINGS MORNING CHRONICLE, 5 JAN., 1824, P. 3 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I [1822]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


30.

PLEADINGS

MORNING CHRONICLE, 5 JAN., 1824, P. 3

This letter, using one of Bentham’s catch-phrases as signature, is in response to a letter, headed “Pleadings” and signed “Hibernicus,” Morning Chronicle, 3 Jan., 1824, p. 3, which is a rebuttal of another letter headed “Pleadings,” signed “G.J.G. Gray’s Inn,” ibid., 26 Dec., 1823, p. 4. Headed as title, subheaded “To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle,” the item is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A short letter on Indictments, signed an Enemy to Legal Fictions, whch. appeared in the Chronicle of January 5th 1824”

(MacMinn, p. 5).

sir,—

In answer to the letter which you inserted some days ago on the subject of Pleadings, your Correspondent, Hibernicus, observes, that it is incorrect to affirm the Grand Jury to be perjurers, when they return upon oath that the prisoner is guilty; because, in fact, all which they mean is, not that he is guilty, but that a prima facie case is made out against him. I, too, have read the letter on Pleadings, and I am sure that the writer agrees with Hibernicus on this subject. All which he intended was, to shew the absurdity of a system of law which forces the Grand Jury to say one thing when they mean another; and not only to say it, but to swear it. This is innocent perjury, but it is perjury, and though the Jurors do not deserve blame, the law evidently does.

An Enemy to Legal Fictions