date

16 May 1808 I. Reasons Ch.V
16 May 1808

I. Reasons

Ch.V. Advantages

§.9./8./ Fiction ousted

In no one instance has a fiction ever been broached, but that in the conduct of the Judge who broached it, two species of guilt have been combined, the political guilt of usurpation, and the moral guilt of wilful falshood: always accompanied with usurpation, so far from operating as an extenuation of that offence, it has in every instance been a feature of aggravation added to it: it has been a species of swindling not commissible[?] in any other than that high station: obtaining power on false pretences: power in the foreground with money behind it in the back ground.

The mischievous consequences have not been confined to those produced by the usurpators[?]. Of the falshood by which the seat of judicature has been polluted the influence has been of the most disastrous kind as well to the public understanding as to the public morals.

To the public morals, by recommending from the highest authority, as a practice worthy of imitation, recommending by open practice, a mode of recommendation universally acknowledged to be so much more forcible and impressible and efficient than simple precept, the vice recommending and from this exalted station, and as it were sanctifying and canonizing the vice of lying, urging men thereby to the commission of all those wrongs for which by those to whom they have thus been instigated to the commission of them they are afterwards punished.

2. To the public understanding, by inculcating and causing so many gross and most pernicious errors, and this too on the part of a Judge, has been not only subservient, conducive, beneficial but for this length has imposture on the one side and infatuation on the other been carried but even necessary to justice.
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    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.

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    To the public understanding again, by contributing its part in the composition of the matter of false science: by contributing its part towards rendering the rule of action unintelligible, and to cause man to acquiesce in its being so, to produce this acquiescence not only on the part of the uninformed and powerless multitude, but on the part even of the select few, to whose office it belongs to concurr in the formation of the laws the extension, correction and improvement of that rule of action which by this and other hundred artifices[?] thus has been rendered unintelligible even to themselves.

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    Such was the change of design and such the cause /causes/ of it As to the means

    employed they were such as are congenial to the practice, and to might be expectd for

    the composition of the Honourable House. They were devised and carried into effect by

    lawyercraft /As usual, lawyercraft was the instrument /power/

    Insincerity is a vice[?]it be mentioned a vice[?] inseparable from sincerity

    incompatible with the situation and practice of every practising Barrister: and to be

    or have been a practising Barrister is {by the bye the condition of every English

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    By the counsels of the practising Barrister is it his in[?] practice of the

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    practise it is the interest that in every thing that is done their insincerity

    /falshood/ /fiction[?]/ in the greatest quantity possible should have place. To[?]

    1. In the first place, by this means the morals of the public, especially the higher

    part of it are debased /corrupted[?]/

    2. In the next pl. The understanding /intellects/, faculties of the same public are

    bewildered, confounded, debased and rendered to a state of debility so prostrate[?]

    as to send them for guidance not only in matters of law but in matters of legislation

    to these their natural enemies whose interest is in a state of irreconciliate

    opposition to the universal interest and to every distinguishable part of it

    3. In the next place fiction[?] under the name of fictive mendacity being an

    instrument of their own inventing[?] and framing an instrument /one of the main

    instruments/ which none but themselves are permitted the use of, by every use made of

    it, /extension is given to/ their sinister power is extended, and advancement to

    their sinister interests.