Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/106

Rh this respect before the revolution, they are now worse. While the prisons are crowded with criminals, the courts of justice are inactive, and in fact, a nullity. Imprisonment is the grand panacea for every evil, and when the prisoners increase too rapidly, so that the detention of so great a number is difficult and dangerous, thirty or forty, at the despotic command of the government, are marched off to the Castle of Omoa, where the climate soon puts an end to their miseries. Their bones mingle with those of thousands of their predecessors, and a new generation succeeds them, to occupy their places for a few months, and then, in turn, to make way for their successors.

Lawyers are an innumerable body, a certain proof that the laws are complex and confounded. In fact, a Guatimalian lawsuit is precisely the same thing as a chancery suit in England. Like a modern mouse-trap, the entrance is wide and tempting; half way in, it is impossible to withdraw,—the rest is an affair of your executors.

This wretched state of the criminal and civil courts of judicature, with the total absence of an organized police, although one of the causes of the frequency of crime, is by no means the most influential. The more immediate source of a great part of the wretchedness and consequent degradation of the lower classes, is to be found