The free administration of justice would diminish and nearly extinguish another great evil, that of malicious civil suits It is an old saying, that "multi litigant in foro, non ut aliquid lucentur, sed ut vexant alios." (Many litigate in court, not that they may gain anything, but that they may harass others.) Many men, from motives of revenge and oppression, are willing to spend their own money in prosecuting a groundless suit, if they can thereby compel their victims, who are less able than themselves to bear the loss, to spend money in the defence. Under the prevailing system, in which the parties pay the expenses of their suits, nothing but money is necessary to enable any malicious man to commence and prosecute a groundless suit, to the terror, injury, and perhaps ruin, of another man. In this way, a court of justice, into which none but a conscientious plaintiff certainly should ever be allowed to enter, becomes an arena into which any rich and revengeful oppressor may drag any man poorer than himself, and harass, terrify, and impoverish him, to almost any extent. It is a scandal and an outrage, that government should suffer itself to be made an instrument, in this way, for the gratification of private malice. We might nearly as well have no courts of justice, as to throw them open, as we do, for such flagitious uses. Yet the evil probably admits of no remedy except a free administration of justice. Under a free system, plaintiffs could rarely be influenced by motives of this kind; because they could put their victim to little or no expense, neither pending the suit, (which it is the object of the oppressor to do,) nor at its termination. Besides, if the ancient common law practice should be adopted, of amercing a party for troubling the courts with groundless suits, the prosecutor himself would, in the end, be likely to be amerced by the jury, in such a manner as to make courts of justice a very unproitable place for a man to go to seek revenge. In estimating the evils of this kind, resulting from the present system, we are to consider that they are not, by any means, confined to the actual suits in which this kind of oppression is practised; but we are to include all those cases in which the fear of such oppression is used as a weapon to compel men into a surrender of their rights. [1] 2 Sullivan Lectures, 234-5. 3 Blackstone, 274-5, 376. Sullivan says that both plaintiff's and defendants were liable to amercement. Blackstone speaks of plaintiffs being liable, without saying whether defendants were so or not. What the rule really was I do not know. There would seem to be some reason in allowing defendants to defend themselves, at their own charges, without exposing themselves to amercement in case of failure.