DEFENCE. CCCXXXV 



&quot; By no means be you persuaded to interpose yourself, 

 either by word or letter, in any cause depending, or like to 

 be depending, in any court of justice, nor suffer any other 

 great man to do it where you can hinder it, and by all 

 means dissuade the King himself from it upon the impor 

 tunity of any for themselves or their friends. If it should 

 prevail it perverts justice, but if the judge be so just and 

 of such courage, as he ought to be, as not to be inclined 

 thereby, yet it always leaves a taint of suspicion behind it ; 

 judges must be chaste as Csesar s wife, neither to be, nor 

 to be suspected to be unjust: and, Sir, the honour of the 

 judges in their judicature is the King s honour, whose 

 person they represent.&quot; (a) 



Thus did he raise his voice in opposition to an inveterate 

 practice. The first mode of correcting error, whether in 

 individuals or in the community, is by proclaiming its 

 existence ; the next is, when ripe for action, by acting. 



That the presents influenced the judgment of the NO influ 

 Chancellor was never for a moment supposed by any man. ^ 

 Fourteen out of the twenty-two charges related to presents 

 made long after the causes were terminated, and the com 

 plaints of his accusers were, not that the gratuities had, 

 but that they had not influenced his judgment, as he had 

 decided against them. 



Such topics would have occurred to any advocate. With 

 what force would they have been urged by the Chancellor ? 

 In his Novum Organ um, which he had published in the 

 previous year, he had warned society, that &quot; at the entrance 

 of every inquiry our first duty is to eradicate any idol by 

 which the judgment may be warped; as the kingdom of 

 man can be entered only as the kingdom of God, in the 

 simplicity of little children.&quot; How powerfully, then, would 



() Ante, p. 176. 



