Source: In Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations, it is attributable to William Ewart Gladstone, but such attribution was not verifiable. Alternatively, it may be attributed to William Penn in the form “to delay Justice is Injustice”. Martin Luther King, Jr., used the phrase in the form “justice too long delayed is justice denied” in his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’, smuggled out of jail in 1963, ascribing it to a ‘distinguished jurist of yesteryear’.