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!