1 June 1805

Evidence

Introd

Ch. False Ends. Judge

' 5 This & bribery

Between corruption in the shape of bribery, and corruption in this shape, there is another distinction and that a most momentous /serious/ one. In the shape of Bribery, like the sort of the English lawyers it dies with the person: in the shape of this unheeded and innumerate /undenominated/ species, it lives with the system, lives as long as that does, and grows richer and richer the longer it has lived. Bribe-taking is the work of an instant, and dies as soon as born. In the other case the profit made by the first purchaser (to speak as an English lawyer) descends to successors, and descends pure: pure, not only of all danger but of all blame.

Bribery is seldom employed but to produce misdecision: ultimate injustice to one or the other side. But of this corrupt connection /corruption/ injustice is equally apt to be the fruit[?] in all its shapes: in the shapes of vexation, expense and delay more naturally and directly than in the shape of misdecision in favour of /for or against/ either side.

When under the influence of this principle of corruption, a system corrupt throughout, adverse throughout to the ends of justice has been produced, the poison of it applies itself to all sorts of causes and to each individual cause of every sort: whereas when it is only in the shape of bribery that the cause of injustice is applied, the effects of it, except in the shape of danger and alarm, that part of the mischief of it which is of the first order, is confined to the individual cause on the occasion of which the briber is given and accepted /received/.