Engrossed as the profession is today with the agitation for the betterment of our remedial procedure, it will sometimes prove profitable to turn aside from the progress of our twentieth century procedure and entering the musty lumber-room of the law, brush aside the cob-webs and take a cursory view of some of the pleas that occupied the time of courts and lawyers of past centuries. Nothing is calculated to encourage more respect for the modern procedure of American and English courts, than reading the history of some of the unequal and unjust privileges and exemptions which obtained in the administration of the English law, until a comparatively recent date. The contrast is indeed striking, when we turn from the just ideals of equality and justice that characterize the remedial procedure of our day, to contemplate some of the customs and pleas that were followed and enforced by our own courts, before the evolution of our civilization had made the present ideals possible. There is no doubt but that the English common law is the outgrowth of the most enlightened system of jurisprudence that the world has ever seen, for it represents the best thought of the brightest minds of civilization’s most progressive people. Its rules and doctrines were formed, however, during the middle ages, and although it was generally consistent with the scholastic methods of thought that dominated the thinking world of that period and for the most part, it was in thorough accord with proper and just ideals, yet, at the same time, the general doctrines and principles were applied along with many of the unequal proceedings and special pleas and privileges existing in favor of the higher classes and together with the extremely technical standards, that frequently were nothing but mere fantastic quibbles. The benefit of clergy is an illustration of the engraftment upon this enlightened system of jurisprudence, of one of the old special privileges of a favored class, who, as an incident and high prerogative of their office, claimed exemption from punishment for crimes. Of course such an exemption of a favored class was inconsistent with the object of distributive justice, to visit equal punishment upon all alike who are similarly situated and with the elevation of the standards of justice and equality, the plea was finally abolished by the legislative and judicial branches of Government in England and the United States. The benefit of clergy, or _privilegium clericale_, was the exemption of the clergy from all responsibility to the temporal courts and laws from the punishment imposed for various criminal offenses. Originally the persons of clergymen alone were held to be exempt from criminal process before a secular judge, but the privilege was later extended by the law to all who could read, as all such were held to be _clerica_, or clerks.