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Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet Quotes

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet , was an English judge.

Bayley was the second son of John Bayley and Sarah his wife, the granddaughter of Dr. White Kennet, bishop of Peterborough. He was born at Elton, Huntingdonshire, on 3 August 1763, and educated at Eton. Though nominated for King's College, Cambridge, he did not go up to the university, and was admitted to Gray's Inn on 12 November 1783. After practising some time as a special pleader, he was called to the bar on 22 June 1792, and went the home circuit. In 1799 he became a serjeant-at-law, and was for some time recorder of Maidstone.

In May 1808 he was made a judge of the King's Bench, in the place of Sir Soulden Lawrence, and was knighted on the 11th of the same month. After sitting in this court for more than twenty-two years, he was at his own request removed to the Court of Exchequer in November 1830. He resigned his seat on the bench in February 1834, and was admitted to the privy council on 5 March 1834. He was created a baronet of Bedford Square, in the County of Middlesex on 15 March 1834. By his quickness of apprehension, his legal knowledge, and his strict impartiality, Sir John Bayley was peculiarly adapted for judicial office.

The ease and pleasure with which he got through his work caused M. Cotte, the French advocate, to exclaim, ‘Il s'amuse à juger.’ The most memorable case which came before Sir John in his judicial capacity was the action for libel brought in 1819 by the attorney-general against Richard Carlile for the republication of Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason and Elihu Palmer's Principles of Nature.

Bayley jointly owned three sugar plantations in British Guiana and Dominica, and when the British government emancipated the slaves in the 1830s, he and his partners were compensated to the tune of over £20,000 each for over 400 slaves in their possession.He died, aged 78, at the Vine House near Sevenoaks, on 10 October 1841. By his wife Elizabeth, the daughter of John Markett of Meopham Court Lodge, co. Kent, he had three sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Sir John Bayley, 2nd Baronet, was a noted cricketer. The 3rd baronet, the Rev. Sir John Laurie Emilius Bayley, was his grandson. Wikipedia  

✵ 1763 – 1841
Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet: 21 quotes0 likes

Famous Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet Quotes

“The law of England is anxious for the interests of persons against whom charges may be made. If a man commits a crime, there is a legal and constitutional mode by which that crime may be brought into discussion. He is liable to be tried, but though his crime may be as great and as aggravated as possible, he ought to have a full, fair, dispassionate, and temperate investigation of his conduct at the time of trial.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 162.
Trial of Sir Francis Burdett (King v. Burdett) (1820)

“Every object and purpose of justice is effectually answered, and every supposed inconvenience is effectually rebutted by the law as it stands.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

King v. Woolf (1819), 1 Chit. 423.

“So long as Courts of justice remain Courts of justice there must be decency maintained.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 382.
Trial of Hunt and others (King v. Hunt) (1820)

“No one can doubt that presumptions may be made in criminal as well as in civil cases. It is constantly the practice to act upon them, and I apprehend that more than one half of the persons convicted of crimes are convicted on presumptive evidence.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 131.
Trial of Sir Francis Burdett (King v. Burdett) (1820)

“Taking out a commission of bankruptcy is a well-known mode of recovering a debt.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

Guthrie v. Fisk (1824), 3 B & C. 183.

“I cannot properly give advice to anybody. It is very often supposed Judges can give advice, and I therefore take this public opportunity of saying that a Judge cannot do it.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

Trial of Dewhurst and others (1820), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 607.

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet Quotes about laws

“[T]ake it to be the bounden duty of the Judge to lay down the law as it strikes him, and that of the jury to accede to it, unless they have superior knowledge on the subject.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 130.
Trial of Sir Francis Burdett (King v. Burdett) (1820)

“There may be cases in which there is so much of difficulty in knowing where the law stands that we take time to consider, and sometimes doubt much and sometimes differ among ourselves. But I believe every one of the Judges acts upon the principle that he is before man and God in the discharge of his duty, and acts upon his solemn oath, and declares tbe law not according to any political fancy, or for the purposes of serving one party or serving another, but according to the pure conviction of his own mind without looking to any party.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

Case of Edmonds and others (1821), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 899.

“The laws of England will protect the rights of British subjects, and give a remedy for a grievance committed by one British subject upon another, in whatever country that may be done.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

Forbes v. Cochrane and Cockburn (1824), 2 St. Tr. (N. S.) 159.

“If a man endeavours to obtain a repeal of those laws, which are conceived to be obnoxious, or the introduction of any laws which he believes to be salutary, if he does that legally, there is no objection to it.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 484.
Trial of Hunt and others (King v. Hunt) (1820)

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet Quotes

“I think the motives of the legislature in passing an Act of Parliament are to be taken to be proper motives.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 312.
Trial of Hunt and others (King v. Hunt) (1820)

“If a man sustains damage by the wrongful act of another, he is entitled to a remedy, but to give that title two things must concur, damage to himself and a wrong committed by the other. That he has sustained damage is not of itself sufficient.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

R. v. Commissioners of Pagham (1828), 8 B. & C. 362.

“You may discuss the question of legality on legal grounds, but not by an argumentum ad hominem.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 282.
Trial of Hunt and others (King v. Hunt) (1820)

“It is one of the essential qualities of a Court of justice, that its proceedings should be public, and that all parties who may be desirous of hearing what is going on, if there be room in the place for that purpose,—provided they do not interrupt the proceedings, and provided there is no specific reason why they should be removed,—have a right to be present for the purpose of hearing what is going on.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

Daubney v. Cooper (1829), 10 B. & C. 240.

“Do not open that which is not evidence.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 505.
King v. Knowles (1820)

“Let no cobler go beyond his last.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 282; invoking Pliny the Elder: "Let the cobler stick to his last".
Trial of Hunt and others (King v. Hunt) (1820)

“I am obliged to watch as he has no counsel”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 505.
King v. Knowles (1820)

“The Court has no fears for the safety of the Christian religion. It does not believe that the rock upon which Christianity stands can ever be shaken.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

Trial of Mary Ann Carlile (1821), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 1050.

“It is of the greatest importance that the administration of justice should not only be free from spot or blame, but that it should be, so far as human infirmity could allow it to become, as free from all suspicion.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

With Lord Ellenborough, C.J., 2 Chit. Bep. 134.
Trial of Hunt and others (King v. Hunt) (1820)

“Where a man speaks upon a subject of his own accord, he naturally tells the whole of what he knows; but where he is examined on interrogatories formally administered to him, his answers are naturally confined to the particulars to which he is so interrogated; and as the examining party generally knows beforehand the scope of the witness's evidence, he has an opportunity of so shaping his questions as that they may elicit everything in his favour with which the witness is acquainted, and keep back everything of a contrary tendency.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

Berkeley Peerage Case (1811), 4 Camp. 405.

“By our rules we cannot receive a letter from a friend.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet

1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 515.
King v. Knowles (1820)

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