28 May 1811 5

Fallacies Ch. | | Self-trumpeters

3

2. Exposure

Although from the pains thus taken by a man in painting /to paint/ himself in the colours of virtue no rational cause if given for looking upon him as being yet neither from his doing so does it in every case absolutely follow that he is not, a man of virtue.

For illustration one case however may be mentioned in which in so far as a man being in a situation of public trust indulges himself in this task in these professions, it is not possible that he should be what he thus pretends to be

This is the case of a Judge, whose /who his/ situation being in a single seated judicatory in which consequently the rate of dispatch the wider[?] system of proceedure being given the rate of dispatch depends singly on himself continues in his seat, after having by sufficient length of experience learnt that the degree of dispatch which his faculties enable him to give falls by a certain amount below the average rate

False /Weakness of/ judgment in any degree misdecision in any degree of frequency is not inconsistent with probity - with the purest probity. For so it may be that though in doing what he does he does that which in the eyes of other men - of other men in general and in particular of those to whom by a special title it belongs to judge he is doing wrong: yet in this own

eyes

eyes what is not impossible or rather what by the supposition is ture, what he does /is doing/ is right.