 your Honour is to know, that these Judges are Persons appointed to
decide all Controversies of Property, as well as for the Tryal of Criminals; and
picked out from the most dextrous Lawyers who are grown old or lazy: And having
been byassed all their Lives against Truth and Equity, are under such a fatal
Necessity of favouring Fraud, Perjury and Oppression; that I have known some of
them to have refused a large Bribe from the Side where Justice lay, rather than
injure the Faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their Nature or their Office.
    It is a Maxim among these Lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may
legally be done again: And therefore they take special Care to record all the
Decisions formerly made against common Justice and the general Reason of
Mankind. These, under the Name of Precedents, they produce as Authorities to
justify the most iniquitous Opinions; and the Judges never fail of decreeing
accordingly.
    In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the Merits of the Cause;
but are loud, violent and tedious in dwelling upon all Circumstances which are
not to the Purpose. For Instance, in the Case already mentioned: They never
desire to know what Claim or Title my Adversary hath to my Cow; but whether the
said Cow were Red or Black; her Horns long or short; whether the Field I graze
her in be round or square; whether she were milked at home or abroad; what
Diseases she is subject to, and the like. After which they consult Precedents,
adjourn the Cause, from Time to Time, and in Ten, Twenty, or Thirty Years come
to an Issue.
    It is likewise to be observed, that this Society hath a peculiar Cant and
Jargon of their own, that no other Mortal can understand, and wherein all their
Laws are written, which they take special Care to multiply; whereby they have
wholly confounded the very Essence of Truth and Falshood, of Right and Wrong; so
that it will take Thirty Years to decide whether the Field, left me by my
Ancestors for six Generations, belong to me, or to a Stranger three Hundred
Miles off.
    In the Tryal of Persons accused for Crimes against the State, the Method is
much more short and commendable: The Judge first sends to sound the Disposition
of those in Power; after which he can easily hang or save the Criminal, strictly
preserving all the Forms of Law.
    Here my Master interposing, said it was a Pity, that Creatures endowed with
such prodigious Abilities of Mind as these Lawyers, by the Description I gave of
them must certainly be, were not rather
