 so changes its Opinion from Day to Day. While Prejudice and Partiality stand invisibly at its Elbow, and at length determine the long suspended Balance, by casting their own Weights into one Scale or the other, according as Interest or Pleasure would wish to preponderate.
Truth, so please your Supremacy, has been sunk in so very deep a Well, as to mock the five-inched Fathom of mere human Ratiocination; whether it be a Dealer or Retailer of Physic or Metaphysics; of the Distinctions in Law, or the Distinctions in Philosophy. And I flatter myself that I alone, the least and most unlikely of all your Majesty's Subjects, have hit upon a Method for fishing up Truth, by a Line which I acknowledge is not of my own twisting.
Within my Memory and, nearly, within that of your Majesty, particular Laws have been in Force for
Trial by Combat,
and
Trial by Ordeal;
and though, at present, those Laws are held to have been iniquitous and wholly absurd, they could not have been instituted without just and ponderous Reasons. They related, my Liege, as my Sentences do, to the Interposition of Providence in the
Jewish Lots;
whereby all Doubts, however general, could be speedily ascertained; where the Nation drew Lots according to Tribes, the Tribes according Families, and the Families by Individuals, till the Criminal was detected.
Thus, in Trial by Combat, I have known and read of manifold Instances, wherein guilty Courage and Prowess have been foiled by the Weak and Fearful. And, in Trial by Ordeal, Heaven never failed to guide the Steps of the hoodwinked Innocent between the narrow Intervals of the burning Plowshares. And thus, conscious of my own Infirmity and Blindness, I have referred all my Decrees to a Power of better Discernment, and he never failed to determine according to Truth.
Indeed, said the Monarch, I cannot wholly disapprove your Method, when I reflect on your Motive. And, according to your Account, when I think on the Plague and Anxiety, Loss of Time and Loss of Fortune, to which my Subjects are put by these Professors of the Law; you have clearly convinced me, my good Lord Judge, that it would be INFINITELY BETTER TO CAST DICE AT THE BEGINNING, THAN TO GIVE THE MOST RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENT AT THE END OF ANY LAW-SUIT.
WHILE the Gentlemen were thus plunged in the bottomless Gulf of the Law, Mrs.
Fielding
beckoned
Ned
to a remote Part of the Room, and was greatly taken with his lively and innocent Chat.
Pray, Mr.
Fenton,
said she
