
THERE cannot be any thing 10 fallacious as the cavils of those authors who complain of being unjustly treated by the public. The judgment of the public, like those laws to which they owe their existence, as a respected and a happy people—spight of the factious few, whose impotent clamour serves, as its shadow, to display the light of reason—never fails to decide firmly, yet indulgently; and nothing can more completely confirm character and security, than the dispassionate determination of the one, and the unbiassed decision of the other.
But, though the judgment of the public and the laws of the land contain in themselves all we know of reason and equity, yet nothing can be so difficult as to make a fair appeal to either. The sons of chicane, in both, so clog up the course, and so poison the air, that the career is fatiguing and dangerous;

and thus many, with fair pretensions, turn back, their pursuits and purposes unaccomplished, and rather resign the honours of the race, than strive to reach a delusive goal, to obtain an unavailing victory.
Perhaps the painter, who had been ruined by going to law, without bringing any thing to issue, had these ideas in his mind when he drew a picture of justice, supported by hunger and thirst.
But I shall leave those laws which the prudence of our forefathers has established for the security of property—which are, in this country, a monument of sober reflection, sound wisdom, and solid judgment; which are, at this moment, dispensed by men of brilliant talents, correct information, and invincible integrity, and which are only inconvenient because they are abused, inefficient because their essence is perverted, and oppressive because they are held out as snares for the good and the worthy, by the wicked and the worthless—and speak of those other laws which civilization has established

for the security of fame, and which, being of a wider extent, and without so decided a criterion, are productive of much more sportive mischief than the others; both because the scribbling pettifoggers have warmer imaginations than the legal ones, and because their nefarious freaks, though full as rascally, may be exercised with impunity.
According to this, illicit lawyers—for I really ought to make this distinction—so they possess a plentiful stock of cunning and craft, need not be overburdened with intellects; but this is not the case with the other class. Illicit writers cannot combat opinions without some stock of general information; their competitors being men of abilities: and thus it happens, that as you may call a lawyer a dunce and welcome, so you do not
