9. To send his Clerk a journey (longer or shorter) to do business with or for different persons; and to charge the horse-hire and expense of that journey to every person severally:

10. To send his Clerk to Westminster, on the business of ten (it may be) or twenty persons, and to charge each of those twenty for his attendance, as if he had been sent on account of one only:

11. To charge his own attendance in like manner: And 12. To fill up his Bill with Attendances, Fees, and Term-fees, though his Client is no whit forwarder in his

cause.

This is he that is called an honest Attorney! How much honester is a pickpocket!

But there is a Magistrate, whose peculiar office it is, to redress the injured and oppressed. Go then and make trial of this remedy; go, and tell your case to the Lord Chancellor. Hold; you must go on regularly: you must tell him your case, in form of law, or not at all. You must therefore file a Bill in Chancery, and retain a Lawyer belonging to that Court. "But you have already spent all you have: you have no money.' have no money." Then I fear you will have no justice. You stumble at the threshold. If you have either lost or spent all, your Cause is naught: it will not even come to a hearing. So, if the oppressor has secured all that you had, he is as safe as if you were under the earth.

21. Now what an amazing thing is this! The very greatness of the villany makes it beyond redress!—But suppose he that is oppressed, has some substance left, and can go through all the Courts of Justice, what parallel can we find among Jews, Turks, or Heathens, for either the delays or the expenses attending it? With regard to the former, how monstrous is it, that in a suit relating to that inheritance, which is to furnish you and your family with food and raiment, you must wait month after month, perhaps year after year, before it is determined, whether it be yours or not? And what are you to eat or to wear in the

mean time? Of that the Court takes no cognizance! Is not this very delay, (suppose there were no other grievance attending the English course of law) wrong beyond all expression? Contrary to all sense, reason, justice, and equity? A capital Cause is tried in one day, and finally decided at once. And, is the life less than meat? Or the body of less concern than raiment ? What a shameful mockery of justice then, is this putting off pecuniary causes from term to term, yea from year to year?

With regard to the latter. A man has wronged me of a hundred pounds. I appeal to a Judge for the recovery of it. How astonishing is it, that this Judge himself cannot give me what is my right, and what evidently appears so to be, unless I first give, perhaps one half of the sum, to men I never saw before in my life!

22. I have hitherto supposed, that all Causes when they are decided, are decided according to justice and equity. But is it so ? Ye learned in the law, is no unjust sentence given in your Courts? Have not the same causes been decided quite opposite ways? One way, this Term, just the contrary, the next? Perhaps one way in the morning (this I remember an instance of) and another way in the afternoon: how is this? Is there no Justice left on earth?

No regard for right or wrong? Or have causes been puzzled so long, that you know not now what is either wrong or right? What is agreeable to law or contrary to it? I have heard some of you frankly declare, that it is in many cases next to impossible to know, what is law, and what is not. So are your folios of Law multiplied upon you that no human brain is able to contain them: no; nor any consistent Scheme, or Abstract of them all.

But is it really owing to ignorance of the law, (this is the most favourable supposition) that so few of you scruple taking Fees on either side, of almost any cause that can be conceived? And that you generally plead in the manner you do on any side of any Cause? Rambling to and fro, in a way so abhorrent from common sense, and so utterly foreign to the question? I have been amazed at hearing the pleadings of some eminent Counsel: and when it has

fallen out that the Pleader on the other side understood only the common Rules of Logic, he has made those eminent men appear, either such egregious knaves, if they could help it, or such egregious blockheads, if they could not, that one would have believed, they would shew their faces there no more.-Mean time, if there be a God that judgeth righteously, what horrid insults upon him are these! "Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?"

23. There is one instance more of (I know not what to term it) injustice, oppression, sacrilege, which hath long cried aloud in the ears of God. For among men, who doth hear? I mean the management of many of those who are intrusted with our Public Charities. By the pious munificence of our forefathers, we have abundance of these, of various kinds. But is it not glaringly true, (to touch only on a few generals) that the managers of many of them, either, 1. Do not apply the benefaction to that use for which it was designed by the benefactor; or, 2. Do not apply it with such care and frugality, as in such a case are indispensably required; or, 3. Do not apply the whole of the benefaction to any charitable use at all; but secrete part thereof, from time to time, for the use of themselves and their families. Or, lastly, by plain, bare-faced oppression, exclude those from having any part in such benefaction, who dare (though with all possible tenderness and respect) set before them the things that they have done: "Yet Brutus is an honourable man:

So are they all: all honourable men!"

And some of them, had in esteem for religion: accounted patterns both of honesty and piety! But God "seeth not as man seeth.” He "shall repay them to their face." Perhaps, even in the present world. For that scripture is often still fulfilled, "This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth. I will bring it forth, saith the Lord of Hosts, and it shall enter into the house of the thief," (such he is and no better, in the eyes of God, no whit honester than a highwayman) " and it shall remain in

the midst of the house, and shall consume it, with the timber thereof, and the stones thereof."

24. And is not Truth, as well as Justice, fallen in our streets? For who speaketh the truth from his heart? Who is there, that makes a conscience of speaking the thing as it is, whenever he speaks at all? Who scruples the telling of officious lies? The varying from Truth in order to do good? How strange does that saying of the ancient Father, sound in modern ears, "I would not tell a lie, no not to save the souls of the whole world." Yet is this strictly agreeable to the word of God: to that of St. Paul in particular, if any say, "Let us do evil that good may come, their damnation is just."

But how many of us do this evil, without ever considering, whether good will come or not? Speaking what we do not mean, merely out of custom, because it is fashionable so to do? What an immense quantity of falsehood does this ungodly fashion occasion day by day? For hath it not overrun every part of the nation? How is all our language swoln with compliment? So that a well-bred person is not expected to speak as he thinks: we do not look for it at his hands; nay, who would thank him for it? How few would suffer it? It was said of old, even by a Warrior and a King, "He that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight:" but are we not of another mind? Do not we rather say, "He that telleth not lies shall not tarry in my sight?" Indeed the trial seldom comes; for both speakers and hearers are agread, that form and ceremony, flattery and compliment should take place, and truth be banished from all that know the world.

And if the rich and great have so small regard to truth, as to lie even for lying sake, what wonder can it be that men of lower rank will do the same thing for gain? What wonder that it should obtain, as by common consent in all kinds of buying and selling? Is it not an adjudged case, That it is no harm to tell lies in the way of trade? To say, that is the lowest price which is not the lowest; or that you will not take what you do take immediately? Insomuch

that it is a proverb even among the Turks, when asked to abate of their price, "What! do you take me to be a Christian!" So that never was that caution more seasonable than it is at this day, "Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother; for every brother will utterly supplant, and they will deceive every one his neighbour."

25. And as for those few who abstain from outward sins, is their heart right with God? May he not say of us also (as of the Jews) "This people is uncircumcised in heart?" Are not you? Do you then "love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your strength?" Is he your God and your all? The desire of your eyes? The joy of your very heart? Rather, do you not set up your idols in your heart? Is not your belly your god? Or your diversion? Or your fair reputation? Or your friend? Or wife? Or child? That is plainly, do not you delight in some of these earthly goods, more than in the God of heaven? Nay, perhaps you are one of those grovelling souls that pant after the dust of the earth! Indeed, who does not? Who does not get as much as he can? Who of those that are not accounted covetous, yet does not gather all the money he can fairly, and perhaps much more? For are they those only whom the world rank among misers, that use every art to increase their fortune? Toiling early and late, spending all their strength in loading themselves with thick clay? How long? Until the very hour when God calleth them; when he saith unto each of them, "Thou fool! this night shall thy soul be required of thee! And whose shall those things be which thou hast prepared?"

26. And yet doth not our pride, even the pride of those whose soul cleaves to the dust, testify against us? Are they not wise in their own conceit? Have not writers of our own remarked, that there is not upon earth a more selfconceited nation than the English; more opinionated both of their own national and personal wisdom, and courage, and strength? And indeed, if we may judge by the inhabitants