date

[104-Unnumbered] 1819 Aug. 26
[104-Unnumbered]

1819 Aug. 26

Fallacies 5

Ch | | Logical High fliers

| | King can do no wrong

One mischief is interwoven in the nature of all these productive of lawyer-craft /mendacity and usurption/ which have been consecrated under the name of fictions. No currency which can be given to the expression or position in its improper sense /adjetitious[?] one/ can altogether prevent its being employed or understood in its original sense. What by one person /set of persons/ it is understood in the one sense by another set of persons it is understood in another /the other/. What is more When by one person it has been employed in the one sense, by one and the same person it has often been employed and thus pretended to be understood in the other. Probably not a fiction has ever been broached, which in the hands of the man or /by whom or of/ the tribe in which it has been broached has not been an instrument of arbitrary power, of oppression and depredation. At all times, under the cloack of restraint, the power of English Judges has been arbitrary: restrained only by /their power restrained[?] by nothing but/ the [...?] of a plaintiff for the production of an [...?]tiative. Better had it been for justice if like that of a Turkish lady it had been arbitrary without disguise. In the first instance No fiction ever has been or ever could have been employed for any other than a dist[...?]est or at the best any other illegal purpose: suppose the purpose legal in so shape could wilful falshood be necessary to afford a warrant for it. By the use thus made of falshood /this counterfeit [...?]/ crime was added to crime: corruption was infused into the morals of the those who [...?] and into the understandings of those upon whom it was made to pass.

By every legal fiction which has received currency, an instrument has accordingly been produced an /a sort of/ instrument of a sort the nature of which has been expressed by, and described under

the

name of a Double Fountain. See Scotch Reform Lett. 1.
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