[lxxxiv. 55]

1821 Dec. 3.

Codification Proposal

penulte

?.5 Draughtsman Single

Lawyers interest begotten prejudices

Thus much /Avove/ as to form. Now as to matter Undisguised and machless atrocity is the characteristic of Rome©bred law: insincerity, imposture and fraud that of English©bred law.

On the penal branch of the field, Rome©bred law opens a class of offences divided into Lese©Majesty divine and Lese©Majesty human. To neither class of acts in any code that had for its object the greatest happiness of the greatest number would any punishment in any shape be attached: to neither is punishment in any shape attached in the Anglo©American United States. and by the governments by which Rome bred law is employed punishment in its most excruciating forms has been attached to both classes

Lawyers fiction is falshood © wilful falshood applied to the purpose of usurpation: to the prejudice of some interest or other it is in any case a fraud.

In their application to the Constitutional branch of law the fictions of English lawyers have not been altogether without excuse: in their application to the adjective branch of law © to the law of judicial procedure, their object has been purely [...?]: and so in their application to the civil branch of the law. Applied to procedure fictions have been the instruments employed by the several judicatories in stealing business that is to say in stealing money from one another In one case fiction has been productive of this cluster of effects in frustrating the known design of legislators law: in cheating out of their estates the individuals entitled under that law; and in giving themselves and their retainers [?] a share in the profits of conveyancing at the expence of the professors of that branch of law. They took /[...?...?]/ away mens estates in pretence of adequate compensation. Knowing him to have no /be without/ property they set up a creature [?] of their own on whom they pretended to impose the obligation of making such compensation.

Under such a system if virtue and vice had for their measure the quantity of good and evil of pleasure and pain respectively produced or worked by them, it would be a question, whether the most virtuous of the men by who whom punishment has been received [?] at such hands have come up /reached [?]/ in the scale of vice to the altitude of the least virtuous of those by whom they have been punished