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8 August 1805
Evidence
Introd. Jurisprudent
Ch. III Lawyer's Art
For an exemplification of the arts practised on this ground by lawyers /lawyercraft/, it will not be either necessary, or so much as of use , to look to any one but /any further than to/ Blackstone. He is the source to /oracle from/ /channel through/ which whosoever thinks it worth his while to think at all /trouble himself/ about law, derives /draws/ whatever notions /conceptions/ he thinks it worth his while to frame concerning the complexion and character of jurisprudential law. No other mind can present so fair a title as this parent mind to exceptence as the character of the legitimate representative of the professional part of the public mind: all other books put together have no so extensive a circulation as that one book. On everything that to common law dead and living, the works of all other authors put together do not contribute so huge a share as his to the formation of the public mind. Scarce any /Not that, unless by a miracle, any/ other lawyer ever speaks of jurisprudential law without bestowing on it the homage of his praise /admiration/: but with all his exertions in this line: but no other lawyer in the extravagance of his adoration ever came up /went beyond/ /could ever venture to outfly/ the extravagance of Blackstone. He if any one /man/, may be regarded as the representative, the genuine representative, the foreman, the chairman, the mouthpiece, the speaker of the profession. After him to bring to [...?] on this /any such/ occasion the language of any other dead author would be useless, if any living author, useless and invidious /any other author, would if he were dead be useless, if living/.
If praise, lavished on a bad system, for the purpose of keeping out a better be matter of imputation, what other quarter could any imputation be fixed with less danger of injustice?
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Title: [8 August 1805 Evidence Introd]Description: 8 August 1805 Evidence Introd. Jurisprudent Ch. Lawyers' Art A system thus loaded with imperfections thus heaving /swarming/ /infested/ in fact with every vice /bad quality/ that imagination himself /itself/ could ascribe to such a subject - a system by which the most important of all works is executed /performed/ in the worst of all manners supposing hypocrisy, or prejudice and imbecility determined at any price to bepraise and trumpet it, what topics what pretences can they have framed to themselves /pitched upon/ out of which to manufacture if possible the matter of praise? Such is the question that on the part of the enquiry will naturally have presented itself to every reader /any mind/ to whom the solution of the difficulty /answer to such a question/ has not been conveyed by other sources. /channels./ The obvious interest of every man that ever spoke or wrote in the character of a lawyer being that every possible sentiment of affection and veneration that possibly could be should for ever be attached to the wish /system/ on which all his hopes are built, the more unworthy /undeserving/ of praise it is /were found to be/, the greater the quality of praise which it was now found necessary to heap upon it. The course taken /sort of language taken/ on these occasions affords /presents/ a striking picture of the subterfuges and artifices /wiles/ of lawyercraft.
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Title: [12 Aug 1804 Procedure Ch. non]Description: 12 Aug 1804 Procedure Ch. non-homologation ''. 8.7. Imposture "Four" (says he) I.70. "if it be found that the former decision is manifestly absurd or unjust it is declared, not that such a sentence was bad law, but that it was not law; that is it is not the established custom of the realm, as has been erroneously determined. And hence it is (continues he) hence "it is" (that is from the employment thus given to the word not in preference to the word bad) that our lawyers are with justice "so copious in their encomiums on the reason of the common law; that that they tell in that the law is the perfection of reason that it always intends to conform thereto, and that what is not reason is not law". Such (he scruples not to assure us) is the virtue of a single word not, when thus happily placed: it not only sets lawyers upon pronouncing these encomiums upon the aggregate of all the nonsense and all the injustice that ever has or ever can have issued from their lips or from their hands - but renders their encomiums " just". Upon the closest and most deliberate scrutiny, in every point in which these two species of law are distinguishable statutory has /differ jurisprudential possesses/ to the degree which has been seen the advantage /has been seen to possess the disadvantage./ No such encomiums nor any thing approaching to them where ever bestowed - no not by the blindest or most bare faced of adulators on the work of the /any/ legitimate legislator: there /yet such/ are the encomiums that Blackstone, the copyist, and the mouthpiece and the acknowledged representative of his tribe is not ashamed to lavish upon the boundless and inextricably intermingled heap of sense and nonsense, of justice and injustice, which under the fiat originally of necessity, since of inadvertence or indolence, or sinister interest to usurp the name of law!
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Title: [14 July 1805 Evidence Introd]Description: 14 July 1805 Evidence Introd. Jurisprudent Ch. II Vices While in the shape of jurisprudential law, the single case of libels is sufficient to keep in a state of real insecurity one of the dearest rights, or rather imagined rights of Englishman, and to keep every man who thinks and wishes as he thinks, in the state of the Orator, who appeared with a halter about his neck.
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