... Sir Charles was severely rebuked by one of his own class when he turned his hand to a little legal innovation in 1864. The following account is taken from The Irishman of 23rd January that year.

Sir Charles had brought an action into court to eject one of his tenants. He made the cardinal mistake of serving the man with a month’s notice on the 25th of the previous November, this meant a notice to quit and deliver up possession of his house … on CHRISTMAS DAY. Not satisfied with this act of unparalleled brutality, he comes before the court with a motion for the purpose of preventing the wretched man, who has the misfortune to be his tenant, from taking defence until he should give sufficient security for the payment of all costs and damages that might be recovered against him if defeated … That a person who is brought by another into Court, and called upon to defend himself, should be prevented from saying what his defence is until he gives security, which, perhaps, he may be totally unable to procure – such legal provision as that could not, we think, exist in any country or against any class, except in Ireland, and against Irish tenants. Yet that provision forms a prominent feature in the latest and final act passed by the British Parliament “for the protection” of the Irish tenant.

Relying on this beneficent provision SIR CHARLES DOMVILLE moved the court that his tenant JOHN BRACKEN should not be allowed to defend himself until he should give security for costs … On this state of facts the Judges of the Queen’s Bench not only unanimously refused the application of SIR CHARLES DOMVILLE, but they freely expressed their sense of the stringent (a word which we not being restrained by judicial dignity, will translate into savage) character of the legal provision in question. And one of the Judges (to whom, in passing, we tender our thanks) sternly and severely rebuked the conduct of the plaintiff, and said that whatever discretion was allowed him, he would always exercise against a man coming into Court with such a case.

quoted in The Development of Ballybrack in the Nineteenth Century By Pól Ó Duibhir
(Read to the Old Dublin society, 16th March, 1977)