JB/091/299/001

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29 Feby 1808

Under the rule of examination but English
practice if not examination of parties.

2. The other mischief consists in the corruption of
morals: the depravation of moral characters both in the
instance part of the client – that is of the members of the community
in general in the character of suitors – and
on the part of the man of law. There are in Both
are thus rendered liars: the one by accident, the other
by profession: the one by misfortune, the other by choice.

There is no enormity to which men are not
by practice.

Never was wickedness more compleatly destitute
of all excuse on the ground of necessity. The licence
is not extended to extraneous witnesses. But there
is no reason why a man should be permitted to be
in the character of a party than in that of a witness.

The mischief would be much less serious than
it is, if the habitual practice of this vice were confined to
professional lawyers the hireling representatives of the
parties: that is if professional lawyers were always in every instance the man who is
once a professional lawyer were always a professional
lawyer, and nothing else.

But the same man who in the earlier part of his
life is a professional lawyer, becomes in the latter part
of it an official lawyer, and in that character is raised
to the highest and most important trusts: and going through this the course
of vice is now rendered an indispensable qualification, a
condition since given now, to his elevation to any of those exalted
stations:

Not more less rational would it be or favourable to virtue, if a
law were made rendering it impossible for a female to enter upon the
matrimonial state, without
having previously passed
five or ten years of her
life in a brothel.

Identifier: | JB/091/299/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 91.
Date_1	1808-02-29	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	091	Main Headings	scotch reform
Folio number	299	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	e3
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	29295
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