No one experienced in the Colony ever thought of privately prosecuting a captured brigand, for a criminal or civil lawsuit in the Philippines was one of the worst calamities that could befall a man. Between notaries, procurators, barristers, and the sluggish process of the courts, a litigant was fleeced of his money, often worried into a bad state of health, and kept in horrible suspense for years. It was as hard to get the judgement executed as it was to win the case. Even when the question at issue was supposed to be settled, a defect in the sentence could always be concocted to re-open the whole affair. If the case had been tried and judgement given under the Civil Code, a way was often found to convert it into a criminal case; and when apparently settled under the Criminal Code, a flaw could be discovered under the _Laws of the Indies_, or the _Siete Partidas_, or the _Roman Law_, or the _Novisima Recopilacion_, or the _Antiguos fueros_, Decrees, Royal Orders, _Ordenanzas de buen Gobierno_, and so forth, by which the case could be re-opened. It was the same in the 16th century (_vide_ p. 56). I knew a planter in Negros Island who was charged with homicide. The judge of his province acquitted him, but fearing that he might again be arrested on the same charge, he came up to Manila with me to procure a ratification of the sentence in the Supreme Court. The legal expenses were so enormous that he was compelled to fully mortgage his plantation. Weeks passed, and having spent all his money without getting justice, I lent his notary L40 to assist in bringing the case to an end. The planter returned to Negros apparently satisfied that he would be troubled no further, but later on, the newly-appointed judge in that Island, whilst prospecting for fees by turning up old cases, unfortunately came across this one, and my planter acquaintance was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, although the family lawyer, proceeding on the same shifty lines, still hoped to find defects in the sentence in order to reverse it in favour of his client. Availing one's self of the dilatoriness of the Spanish law, it was possible for a man to occupy a house, pay no rent, and refuse to quit on legal grounds during a couple of years or more. A person who had not a cent to lose could persecute another of means by a trumped-up accusation until he was ruined, by an "_informacion de pobreza_"--a declaration of poverty--which enabled the persecutor to keep the case going as long as he chose without needing money for fees. [111] A case of this kind was often started at the instigation of a native lawyer. When it had gone on for a certain time, the prosecutor's adviser would propose an "extra-judicial arrangement," to extort costs from the wearied and browbeaten defendant.