allowed to speak for himself. "Now, in this case, I, who am the right lie under two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will. The second disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one that would lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is, to gain over my adversary's lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray his client by insinuating that he has justice on his side. The second way is for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary and this, if it be skilfully done, will certainly bespeak the favour of the bench. Now your honour is to know that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who have grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing anything unbecoming their nature or their office. 'It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever has 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 directing 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 has 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 was 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 has a peculiar cant 39 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 falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me or to a stranger three hundred miles off.* "In the trial 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 a criminal, strictly preserving all due 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 encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge. In answer to which I assured his honour that in all points out of their own trade they were usually the most ignorant and stupid gene While every one must admit that this picture of law and lawyers is grossly distorted and over-coloured, it is impossible not to be amused with its ingenuity and humour. The manner in which Swift enumerates, as disadvantages, the very points which should be in the litigant's favour, is intensely bitter. Yet, with all the extravagance and injustice of the invective, some of the matters assailed by Swift were, as the state of the law was in his day, fairly open to grave censure. A too servile adherence to precedents-a system of pleading intricate and embarrassing, by means of which the merits of the case were often lost sight of, or excluded by the subtlety of the pleader, justice frustrated, and the decision obtained on some collateral point of minor importance, or, it might be, on purely technical grounds opposed to the right of the case—and a dilatoriness that deprived justice of half its value when it was at length arrived at all these made the law and the professors of the law proverbially unpopular. The barbarous jargon in which both pleadings and arguments were conducted was an additional cause of disfavour and ridicule. In the admirable burlesque report of Stradling versus Stiles, to which we have already alluded, many of these defects are most happily ridiculed. The reforms that have taken place in every branch of the law have done much to remove these various defects and grievances. Above all, the reproach of the tardiness of justice is no longer warranted at least, to any great extent-and instead of a suit taking thirty years to bring it to a close (as sometimes happened in Swift's time), there are few that are not terminated long before the expiration of three. + In this severe stricture upon judges Swift was, no doubt, influenced by his animosity to Lord Chief Justice Whitshed, who had proceeded with great violence against Waters, the printer of the Dean's proposal for the universal use of Irish manufactures, and who showed the same indecorous eagerness to induce the grand jury to find the bill against Harding, the printer of the Drapier's letters. He demanded, with passion, the reasons upon which the jury founded their verdict of Ignoramus, although it was, in fact, requiring them, contrary to the oath they had taken, to disclose their fellows' counsel and their own. And finally, when he could make no impression upon the jurors, he discharged them in great wrath. Let us be thankful that judges now hold their office for life, and being thus made independent of the influence of the crown, are rarely, if ever, found to depart from the strict line of their duty. ration among us; the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse as in that of their own profession. CHAPTER VI. A CONTINUATION OF THE STATE OF ENGLAND UNDER QUEEN ANNE. THE CHARACTER OF A FIRST MINISTER OF STATE IN EUROPEAN COURTS. Y master was yet wholly at a loss to understand what motives could incite this race of lawyers to perplex, disquiet, and weary themselves, and engage in a confederacy of injustice, merely for the sake of injuring their fellow-animals; neither could he comprehend what I meant in saying they did it for hire. Whereupon I was at much pains to describe to him the use of money, the materials it was made of, and the value of the metals; that when a Yahoo had got a great store of this precious substance he was able to purchase whatever he had a mind to-the finest clothing, the noblest houses, great tracts of land, the most costly meats and drinks. Therefore, since money alone was able to perform all these feats, our Yahoos thought they could never have enough of it to spend or to save, as they found themselves inclined, from their natural bent, either to profusion or avarice. That the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor man's labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the former. That the bulk of our people were forced to live very miserably by labouring every day for small wages to make a few live plentifully. I enlarged myself much on these and many other particulars to the same purpose; but his honour did not understand, for he went upon a supposition that all animals had a title to their share in the productions of the earth, and especially those who presided over the rest. Therefore he desired I would let him know what these costly meats were, and how any of us happened to want them. Whereupon I enumerated as many sorts as came into my head, with the various methods of dressing them, which could not be done without sending vessels by sea to every part of the world, as well for liquors to drink as for sauces and innumerable other conveniences. I assured him that this whole globe of earth must be at least three times gone |