29 Feb y 1808

Letter VI

Omissa & Facienda

II. no Allegat sans Oath

It is not necessary that professional lawyers should be habitual [...?]. It is not necessary that Judges should have been professional lawyers. Judicature not advocateship is the best school for judicature.

What serves as a pretence at least and indeed in some degree as a reason for taking none but professional lawyers to serve /officiate as Judges is the practice and [...?] in a word the intellectual aptitude of which the [...?] of the profession is a cause.

Thus it is that for the sake of one improvement in the intellectual part of a man's frame, the moral part is debased.

Nor is this all. Not long ago an observation was made that if clever men sitting on the [...?] bench in the House of Commons he either belonged at that time /he were[?] there[?] or had at one time belonged at/ to the profession of the law.

From such a training[?] can any thing better than habitual [...?] be rationally expected?