

JUDGE. 



them patiently ; (d) correcting their defects, not suffering 

 justice to be perverted by their ingenuity, and encou 

 raging their merits : to the inferior officers by rewarding 

 the virtuous, skilful in precedents, wary in proceeding, 

 and understanding in the business of the court; and 

 discountenancing the vicious, sowers of suits, disturbers 

 of jurisdiction, impeders, by tricks and shifts, of the 

 plain and direct course of justice, and bringing it into 

 oblique lines and labyrinths : and the poller and exacter 

 of fees,(y) who justifies the common resemblance of the 

 courts to the bush, whereunto while the sheep flies for 

 defence in weather, he is sure to lose part of his fleece: 

 to himself, by counteracting the tendency of his situa 

 tion to warp his character, and by proper use of times of 

 recreation: to his profession, by preserving the privi 

 leges of his office, and by improvement of the law: 

 and to society by advancing justice and good feeling, in 

 the suppression of force and detection of fraud ; (k) in 



saying (as Serjeant Mandevil reports it), being, &quot; We must have two souls, 

 as two sieves : one for the bran, the other for the flour ; the one for the gross 

 of a discourse, the other for the quintessence.&quot; Lloyd s Life of Fitzjames. 



The errors of patience are on the one side slowness, on the other dispatch. 



(d) It is no grace to a judge first to find that which he might have heard 

 in due time from the bar; or to shew quickness of conceit in cutting off 

 evidence or counsel too short, or to prevent information by questions, 

 though pertinent. 



(/) His hands, and the hands of his hands (I mean those about him) 

 must be clean; and uncorrupt from gifts, from meddling in titles, and 

 from serving of turns, be they of great ones or small ones. 



One of Sir M. Hale s rules is, &quot; To charge my servants, 1st, not to 

 interpose in any business whatsoever ; 2ndly, not to take more than their 

 known fees. 



(k} Force the vice of strength : cunning the vice of weakness. The 

 principal duty of a judge is to suppress force and fraud ; whereof force is 

 the more pernicious when it is open, and fraud when it is close and dis 

 guised. A judge ought to prepare his way to a just sentence, as God 

 useth to prepare his way, by raising valleys and taking down hills : so 



