date

31 July 1805 Evidence Introd
31 July 1805

Evidence

Introd. Jurisprud.

Ch. III Lawyers Art

''. Popular affection

no argument

3. Under the influence of the causes of delusion to the action of which on this ground the body of the people have every been exposed, it would be strange indeed if any degree of depravity on the part of the system could have prevented or destroyed /dissolved/ their attachment to it. Of their own /On any judgment/ views /of his own/ framing it is generally impossible for a non-lawyer to form any tolerable adequate and distinct conception at all of the merit of the jurisprudential part of the law: it is a terror incognita his conception of which can not be collected from any other source than the accounts of Voyagers. But without any exception whatsoever the accounts of Voyagers are all false, dressed up in eulogistic and flattering colours, by a set of men practised in falshood possessing falshood engaged /urged/ by the force of the most irresistable interests to practice /pact in practice/ /work with all their might/ the arts of deception for this purpose, and purchasing them accordingly /exhausting upon this object their whole budget/ without measure or remorse.

Suppose an island any where about the antipodes an Island which for several centuries past had been continually visited, and traversed in the all directions by travellers in scores or hundreds at a time, all agreeing in representating it as a sort of Utopia, an earthly paradise /a paradise upon earth/? Be the real state of this Island /Utopia/ ever so opposite to this the picture thus given of it, by what means shall those who sit /remain/ at home rendering of all these marvels in their elbow chairs, be able to detect the falsity of it? Sooner or late, here and there a critick might arise, who, by means of those incredibilities and inconsistencies which oversight and negligence will be sure to scatter here and there over every extensive plan of falshood /scheme of imposture/ will have pointed it out /out the fallacy/ and proved it to the satisfaction of all who have leisure or will or curiosity to attend to it and strength of mind to go through with it. But even them, who shall say what length of time shall have been sufficient to cure the body of the people of a delusion so universally imbibed?
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