JB_106_372.xml

Title: [1823. Feb y. 28. Greece. J.B's Observations]

Description: 1823. Feb y. 28.

Greece. J.B's Observations on particular Articles

Judiciary resumed

In a country in which a sort of imaginary law, called unwritten, and which has so much more writing belonging to it than that which is called written, has place, the choice made of Judges from the order of Advocates, has an unhappily existing reason, adequate or inadequate, as well as a pretence. There being no rule of action really in existence, the hireling advocate is the only sort of man who can be regarded as an adept in the art of speaking of the case, whatever it be, in a manner that supposes the existence of a rule of action, and in the use of that jargon which has been employed in palming upon the public that fiction in the character of a truth. To him alone is sufficiently familiar that branch of the thieve's cant. The care of keeping on foot this disastrous reason, this unhappy necessity, is one cause of the care taken by the fraternity of Lawyers to keep the rule of action from ever receiving real existence. By the impossibility of defending himself, by his own powers, against those injuries which the fraternity are in league to inflict on him, a man is thus under the deplorable necessity of purchasing, at the ruinous price set upon it, their essentially treacherous assistance. Bonaparte being a Despot, was, by the vigor of his mind, enabled to add to his vulgar triumphs, too transcendental ones: triumphs over the two bitterest and most mischievous enemies of the human race - established priests and lawyers. Over the lawyer tribe, the main cause and token of his triumph was the establishment of a really-existing body of law, having for its object not indeed the greatest happiness - not of the greatest number, but of the one, Napoleon Bonaparte: it sacrificed, wheresoever competition appeared to show itself, the interest of all, to the interest of that one. But, had it been several times worse than it is, France would still have beheld and felt in it a matchless benefit. The Citizens of the Anglo-American United States have thrown off the yoke of a Monarchy, have thrown off the yoke of an Aristocracy, have many of them, thrown off the yoke of an established priesthood. But the yoke of the hireling advocate still presses upon their necks: their courage has been sufficient to free them from the yoke of the English Monarch: but their wisdom has not yet been sufficient to liberate them from the yoke imposed upon them by the most corrupt and profligate of his tools.

Oh weakness!

JB_106_371.xml

Title: [1823 Feb y. 28. Greece. J.B's Observations]

Description: 1823 Feb y. 28.

Greece. J.B's Observations on particular Articles.

Judiciary resumed

But if there were a sort of man on whom a note of eminent untrustworthiness should be put for the instruction and guidance of a Jury, it should be the hireling advocate. When the man, impregnated to the very marrow with the practice of mendacity and the love of injustice, is raised to the Judicial Bench, an appropriate masquerade dress is put upon him, and the silly and deluded multitude behold in him justice personified. Oftener has the Black mare been rendered white by dipping, than the hireling advocate converted, by a seat on the Judicial Bench, into a lover of Justice. Every now and then in England, passes the following scene. Advocate or Judge to witness - Do you believe in the existence of a God? Witness to Judge - Yes - Judge, thereupon, to Advocate - Proceed with him, he is a good witness - Advocate or Judge to Witness - Do you believe in the existence of a God? - Witness - No: Judge - Out with him: his testimony is not receivable. Thus, then, if the Atheist will, to so indefensible a question, give a false answer, he is admitted: but, if his regard for truth be such that he will not give a false answer, he is held out as an object of reproach,- a man, to whose testimony no regard can safely be given, and, as such rejected. But to the man of habitual mendacity, any such man of conspicuously and painfully manifested veracity, is an object of the deepest hatred and vengeance; and, to gratify this malignant passion, he scruples not to make sacrifice of the injured party, whose misfortune it has been to have need of the testimony of this too veracious witness.

JB_106_364.xml

Title: [1823. Feb y. 27. Greece. J.B's Observations]

Description: 1823. Feb y. 27.

Greece. J.B's Observations on particular Articles

Judiciary

For example, in the land branch of the Military Service, there will be certain classes of offences to which the power of the ordinary local Judicatories will not be found applicable; and so in the case of the Maritime branch of that same service. But it follows not that because, in these particular cases, it is necessary that offences belonging to these particular classes be withdrawn from the cognizance of the ordinary Judicatories, they should be so in any cases to which the necessity does not extend.

The