UNTIL THE Judicature Act of 1873 an applicant for a
writ of Habeas Corpus was rightly allowed to make more of a nuisance of himself than other litigants, by trudging around from court to court, or in vacation, from judge to judge, in efforts to persuade judges of different temper to restore his liberty. Not only has he been deprived of this odd but valuable privilege for the last eighty-six years, according to the latest judgment of a Chancery divisional court, but he is now actually in a worse position than any other litigant since he has no right of appeal in the ordinary way. A further anomaly is that applicants for Habeas Corpus in a colony, as for example the Bahreini prisoners in St. Helena, whose application has recently failed, do have the possibility of an appeal to the Privy Council. That, at any rate, is just as well; it does something to make up for the curious readiness of the British Government to provide frigates and places of detention for the reception of people who have not even been tried by a British court.
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