Amelia | Page 7

was too good to be altered in any particular, and which,
nevertheless, hath been mending ever since, by a very great number of
the said wise men: if, I say, this constitution should be imperfect, we
may be allowed, I think, to doubt whether any such faultless model can
be found among the institutions of men.
It will probably be objected, that the small imperfections which I am

about to produce do not lie in the laws themselves, but in the ill
execution of them; but, with submission, this appears to me to be no
less an absurdity than to say of any machine that it is excellently made,
though incapable of performing its functions. Good laws should
execute themselves in a well-regulated state; at least, if the same
legislature which provides the laws doth not provide for the execution
of them, they act as Graham would do, if he should form all the parts of
a clock in the most exquisite manner, yet put them so together that the
clock could not go. In this case, surely, we might say that there was a
small defect in the constitution of the clock.
To say the truth, Graham would soon see the fault, and would easily
remedy it. The fault, indeed, could be no other than that the parts were
improperly disposed.
Perhaps, reader, I have another illustration which will set my intention
in still a clearer light before you. Figure to yourself then a family, the
master of which should dispose of the several economical offices in the
following manner; viz. should put his butler in the coach-box, his
steward behind his coach, his coachman in the butlery, and his footman
in the stewardship, and in the same ridiculous manner should
misemploy the talents of every other servant; it is easy to see what a
figure such a family must make in the world.
As ridiculous as this may seem, I have often considered some of the
lower officers in our civil government to be disposed in this very
manner. To begin, I think, as low as I well can, with the watchmen in
our metropolis, who, being to guard our streets by night from thieves
and robbers, an office which at least requires strength of body, are
chosen out of those poor old decrepit people who are, from their want
of bodily strength, rendered incapable of getting a livelihood by work.
These men, armed only with a pole, which some of them are scarce
able to lift, are to secure the persons and houses of his majesty's
subjects from the attacks of gangs of young, bold, stout, desperate, and
well-armed villains.
Quae non viribus istis Munera conveniunt.

If the poor old fellows should run away from such enemies, no one I
think can wonder, unless it be that they were able to make their escape.
The higher we proceed among our public officers and magistrates, the
less defects of this kind will, perhaps, be observable. Mr. Thrasher,
however, the justice before whom the prisoners above mentioned were
now brought, had some few imperfections in his magistratical capacity.
I own, I have been sometimes inclined to think that this office of a
justice of peace requires some knowledge of the law: for this simple
reason; because, in every case which comes before him, he is to judge
and act according to law. Again, as these laws are contained in a great
variety of books, the statutes which relate to the office of a justice of
peace making of themselves at least two large volumes in folio; and
that part of his jurisdiction which is founded on the common law being
dispersed in above a hundred volumes, I cannot conceive how this
knowledge should by acquired without reading; and yet certain it is, Mr.
Thrasher never read one syllable of the matter.
This, perhaps, was a defect; but this was not all: for where mere
ignorance is to decide a point between two litigants, it will always be
an even chance whether it decides right or wrong: but sorry am I to say,
right was often in a much worse situation than this, and wrong hath
often had five hundred to one on his side before that magistrate; who, if
he was ignorant of the law of England, was yet well versed in the laws
of nature. He perfectly well understood that fundamental principle so
strongly laid down in the institutes of the learned Rochefoucault, by
which the duty of self-love is so strongly enforced, and every man is
taught to consider himself as the centre of gravity, and to attract all
things thither. To speak the truth plainly, the justice was never
indifferent in a cause but when he could get nothing on either side.
Such was the justice to whose