counts,
(the 6th and 7th,) on which there were good findings by the jury, and,
with the exception of Mr Justice Patteson, four good counts, (the 1st,
2d, 3d, and 4th,) on which there were bad findings. The effect of this
twofold error was thus tersely stated by Mr Baron Gurney, and adopted by
the Lord Chancellor.[10]

"I cannot distinguish between a bad finding on a good count, and a good
finding on a bad count. They appear to me to amount to precisely the
same thing--namely, that upon which no judgment can be pronounced. The
judgment must be taken to have proceeded upon _the concurrence of good
counts and good findings_, and upon nothing else."

Here, then, at length, it seems that we have hit upon a _blot_--a petty,
circumscribed blot to be sure, upon a vast surface of otherwise
unsullied legal sufficiency; but still--in the opinion of the judges--a
blot.

What was to be held the effect of it? Or had it _any_ effect?

The traversers' counsel, at the bar of the House of Lords, took by
surprise every one whom they addressed--all their opponents, all the
judges, all the law lords, and all the legal profession, as soon as they
had heard of it--by boldly affirming, that if this blot really existed,
it would invalidate and utterly nullify the whole proceedings from the
beginning to the end! They hammered away at this point accordingly, hour
after hour--day after day--with desperate pertinacity; being compelled
from time to time, during their hopeful argument, to admit, that up to
that moment the rule or custom which they were seeking to impeach had
been universally acted upon from time immemorial, to the contrary of
that for which they were contending. This strange and novel point of
theirs gave rise to the third and eleventh questions put to the judges.
These questions are substantially identical, viz., whether a single bad
count in an indictment on which there has been a general verdict of
guilty, with judgment accordingly, will entitle the fortunate defendant
to a reversal of that judgment?

We heard a considerable portion of the argument; and listened to _this_
part of it with a comfortable consciousness that we beheld, in each
counsel arguing it, as it were, a viper gnawing a file! If _this_ be
law, thought we, then have many thousands of injured gentlemen been, in
all human probability, unjustly hanged, and transported for life or for
years, been fined, imprisoned, sent to the tread-mill, and publicly
whipped; f