Note 53 — SAMUEL GOODERE AND OTHERS

After mentioning certain obsolete rules relating to indictments, Sir James Stephen says:—'I do not think that anything has tended more strongly to bring the law into discredit than the importance attached to such technicalities as these. As far as they went, their tendency was to make the administration of justice a solemn farce. Such scandals do not seem, however, to have been unpopular. Indeed, I have some doubt whether they were not popular, as they did mitigate, though in an irrational, capricious manner, the excessive severity of the old criminal law' (Hist. Crim. Law, vol. i. p. 284).