primitive state of matters which did not bunal of its usurped authority. But evaded long exist. The King's Bench possessed a it was, by a most astute device. A plaintiff twofold jurisdiction : ( i ) over all pleas of whose cause of action enabled him to hold the crown not relating to revenue, a cate the defendant to bail for more than .£40, was permitted in the process to command gory which comprised all felonies and mis demeanors, a controlling power over other the sheriff to arrest the defendant in order courts of criminal jurisdiction, and the right that he might answer the plaintiff in tres to inquire into matters of franchises and pass and also (ac etiam) for a debt, or liberties or the wrongful usurpation of offi whatever the claim might be. This at once gave the court cial functions; and jurisdiction by the ( 2 ) over matters of fictitious allegation a private nature in of trespass and com volving injuries al plied with the statute, leged to have been by setting forth the committed with force, or in which the de true cause of action fendant was charged in the writ! Under with falsity or deceit. the Judicature Acts, By an ingenious series 1873 and 1875, the of legal fictions, the Courts of Exchequer, King's Bench subse Common Pleas and quently acquired Queen's Bench be jurisdiction over all came branches of personal actions of a the High Court of civil nature, and Justice, under the "although by a sub name of Divisions. sequent statute, 3 But, by Order in Car. II. st. 2, 1. 2, Council, dated the this acquired, or 1 6th of December, rather usurped, juris 1880, the Common diction of the court Pleas and Exchequer had nearly met with Divisions were abol LORD CHIEF JUSTICE COCKBURN a decisive check; ished, or rather mer yet it was retained by an exercise of ged in the Queen's Bench Division, and ingenuity not inferior to that by which the powers of their former heads — the it had in the first instance been assumed." Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer (Broom's Com., — pp. 41, 42.) The stat — passed, under the Judicature Act of ute to which we have referred provided that 1 88 1, to the Lord Chief-Justice of England. where a defendant was to be held to bail for more than £o by virtue of process issuing Their puisne judges (who were called Barons in the Court of Exchequer — out of the Court of King's Bench or Com mon Pleas, the true cause of action should be Barons Huddleston and Pollock were the specified in the writ or process. As the last of the series) became justices of the jurisdiction of the King's Bench in personal Queen's Bench Division. Under the Ju dicature Act of 1873, the powers of the actions was founded on a fictitious allega tion of trespass, this statute, unless it had Court of Exchequer Chamber, which was been evaded, would have stripped that tri- previously a court of appeal by writ of error
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