This is a
sore evil among the people.
"_Secondly_, The people's ignorance of the laws hath bred many sons
of contention. For when any difference falls out between man and
man, they neither of them know which offends the other; therefore,
both of them thinking their cause is good, they delight to make use
of the Law; and then they go and give a Lawyer money to tell them
which of them was the offender. The Lawyer, being glad to maintain
his own trade, sets them together by the ears till all their money
be near spent; and then bids them refer the business to their
neighbors to make them friends, which might have been done at the
first. So that the course of the Law and Lawyers hath been a mere
snare to entrap the people and to pull their estates from them by
craft. For the Lawyers do uphold the Conqueror's Interest and the
People's Slavery; so that the King, seeing this, did put all the
affairs of Judicature into their hands: and all this must be called
Justice, but it is a sore evil.
"But now if the Laws were few and short, and often read, it would
prevent those evils. Everyone, knowing when they did well and when
ill, would be very cautious of their words and actions, and thus
would escape the Lawyer's craft. As Moses' Law in Israel's
Commonwealth: '_The People did talk of them when they lay down and
when they rose up, and as they walked by the way, and bound them as
bracelets upon their hands_:' so that they were an understanding
people in the Laws wherein their peace did depend.
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