ur honour is to know, that these
judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as
well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most
dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all
their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of
favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them
refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure
the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office.

"It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever has been done before,
may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record
all the decisions formerly made against common justice, and the general
reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as
authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never
fail of directing accordingly.

"In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the
cause; but are loud, violent, and tedious, in dwelling upon all
circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case
already mentioned; they never desire to know what claim or title my
adversary has to my cow; but whether the said cow were red or black; her
horns long or short; whether the field I graze her in be round or square;
whether she was milked at home or abroad; what diseases she is subject
to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause
from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come to an issue.

"It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and
jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all
their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby
they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of
right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide, whether the
field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to a
stranger three hundred miles off.

"In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state, the method
is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the
disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang or save a
criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law."

Here my master interposing, said, "it was a pity, that creatures endowed
with such prodigious abilities of mind, as these lawyers, by the
de