Digges's Lessee v. Beale

It is to be noted, there is a difference between such conditional estates where the Lord has an interest, and is deprived of it by the infancy, &c. and between the present case. It is a fundamental and immutable principle of Magna Charta that justice must not be sold. So it is, that no man ought tobe condemned unheard. If then a sentence be passed against a person unheard, and such sentence, till it be reversed, is to have the same force and effect with the justest j udgment, or a j udgment in which only some legal formalities have been omitted, or a judgment which though erroneous, has been pronounced by the Judge after he had exercised all the faculties of his mind and understanding, to discriminate the truth or falshood, justice or injustice of the allegations of the contending parties; and the person against whom such sentence has passed unheard, is obliged to be at the expense of reversing such judgment; can he be said not to buy justice ?

To this it is objected that all erroneous judgments which are allowed to be voidable, and indeed all manner of judicial proceedings which are attended with a charge are liable to the same objection. To this it is answered when two parties contend for any thing, it cannot be known who has the right, till all the evidence relating to it can be brought to light and a proper examination, which cannot but be attended with a charge, which -the aggressor generally pays; and if after all,, the Judge is mistaken, either in the force of the evidence or makes wrong inferences from, and gives an erroneous judgment, that is a determination of the matter in dispute, till a further examination of it, by which something arising from the nature of the evidence which was at first overlooked may be discovered, or just