Lloyd Kenyon

“I can't look to contingencies.”

“Counsel are frequently induced, and they are justified in taking the most favourable view of their clients' case; and it is not fair to pass over any piece of evidence they find difficult to deal with, provided they cite, fairly and correctly, those parts of the evidence they comment upon.”

“In dispensing the criminal justice of the country, we have sometimes an arduous task to perform. It is not a pleasant thing, most certainly, to condemn any one of our fellow creatures to punishment; but those who are entrusted with the administration of the criminal justice of a country, must summon up their fortitude, and render justice to the public, as well as justice tempered with mercy to the individual.”

“A man may publish anything which twelve of his countrymen think not blamable.”

“The liberty of the press is dear to England; the licentiousness of the press is odious to England: the liberty of it can never be so well protected as by beating down the licentiousness.”

“I hope that there is no jealousy, or even ground of jealousy, on the part of the Americans, but that they know that when their rights come to be discussed here the greatest attention will be paid to their interests. They have long been acquainted with the habits of this country, and with the mode of administering justice here : until within these few years their causes used to come over here to be discussed, and I never heard that the decisions in our Courts ever awakened the least jealousy in the breasts of the inhabitants of that country.”

“Proceedings at law are sufficiently expensive.”

“We ought not to decide hastily against the words of an Act of Parliament.”

“Notwithstanding all the care and anxiety of the persons who frame Acts of Parliament to guard against every event, it frequently turns out that certain cases were not foreseen.”

“Precedent goes in support of justice.”

“A plaintiff who comes into a Court of justice must show that he is in a condition to maintain his action.”

“Whatever might have been my opinion, had this been a new case, I must hold myself bound by decided cases.”

“Some modern cases have in my opinion gone too far.”

“Apprentices and servants are characters perfectly distinct: the one receives instruction, the other a stipulated price for his labour.”

“Sitting in a Court of law, I can receive no evidence but what comes under the sanction of an oath.”

“I should be extremely sorry to find that in a fictitious proceeding, instituted for the more easy attaining of justice, different rules were to obtain in the different Courts.”

“I take it that the judgment is an essential point in every conviction, let the punishment be fixed or not.”

“A conviction is in the nature of a verdict and judgment, and therefore it must be precise and certain.”

“It is impossible for the Court to foresee when a sentence begins how it will end, and, sometimes, mischief is done before we are sure that the sentence will conclude in an offensive manner.”

“If people with the very best intentions carry on prosecutions that are oppressive, the end may not always perhaps sanctify the means.”