5 June 1805

Evidence

Introd.

Ch False Ends. Judges

' 6 Interest. connections

In such a state of things /confusion of interests/, what a demand created for vice in various forms and colours, in high places! [for fraud], for dissimulation, for simulating for interest for hypocrisy, for mendacity, for fraud! What industry employed in imparting /borrowing/ /imparting/ the arts of the theatre into the machinery of justice! What eagerness to do as much as possible in appearance, as little as possible in effect: to lament over the disease, while the cause of it was protected, cherished, and inflamed! On every occasion of [...?] /favorable occasion, in/ what indignation against chicane, what sympathy for the vexed[?] and pillaged /afflicted/ suitor, what zeal for substantial justice!

Such would have bene the natural course of things had the system with its principle of corruption, remained to be planted? in an enlightened a polished age. But in fact the truth is the rude ages in which it was reared gradually into maturity, no such labour was necessary: backed by irresistible power, the grossest conduct was adequate to the purpose: the grossest conduct, accompanied by the coarsest language.

Of the effects of such an arrangement, under English jurisprudence, in that golden age, that age of primitive simplicity, when Oppression and depredation went naked without being ashamed, a sample will be found in the Note below. (a)