My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

MONEY MATTERS 361house cost me somewhat more than the contract price,and when it was finished I sent him word he couldhave his ladders, scaffold-poles, boards, etc., though,according to the agreement, they were to be myproperty on his failure to finish the building.Isoon found, however, that he had not paid for akept cominglarge portion of the materials, and billsin for months afterwards for bricks, timber, stone,iron-work, etc., etc. The merchants who had trustedhim found that he had no effects whatever, as he livedas a lodger with his father ;and from all I heard, wasaccustomed to take contracts in different places roundLondon, and by not paying for any materials that hecould get on credit, made a handsome profit. Butthe height of his impudence was to come. Aboutfive years after the house was finished, I received ademand through a lawyer for (I think) between £800and ;^900 damages for not allowing this man to finishthe house ! I wrote, refusing to pay a penny. Thencame a notice of an action at law ;and I was obligedto put it in a lawyer's hands. All the usual preliminariesof interrogatories, affidavits, statements of claim,replies, objections^ etc., etc., were gone through, andon every point argued we were successful, with costs,which we never got. The case was lengthened outfor two or three years, and then ceased, the resultbeing that I had to pay about ;^ioo law costs forwhat was merely an attempt to extort money. Thatwas my experience of English law, which leaves thehonest man in the power of the dishonest one, mulctsthe former in heavy expenses, and is thus the veryantithesis oijustice.The next matter was a much more seriousone,and cost me fifteen years of continued worry, litigation,and persecution, with the final loss of several