Page:Memoir upon the negotiations between Spain and the United States of America which led to the treaty of 1819.djvu/121

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��successive accumulation of acts and general orders of Congress: to this chaos is added an immense multitude of commentators, casuists and writers of jurisprudence, who open a field of iniinite extent for the opinions and subtilties of the dialectician and forensick metaphysician. The judges pro- nounce arbitrarily, and it is very common to see one decide for, and another against, in the same case, and under circumstances perfectly equal.

Besides the general laws of the Union, there are particular laws in each state, made by its re- spective legislature; and hence it results, that what is a capital crime in one state, is not so in another, and that a debtor, who has no means of paying his debts, is free in some states, and sent to prison in others. This difference favours the frauds of the corrupt, and affords impunity to crimes, and triumpli to collusion and swindling. Under such a legisla- tion, imposition must become an art, and in fact there is no country in the world, w here there is so much of it. The lawyers convert the forum into a hall of ostentatious declamation and refined so- phistry: they support the j)ro and the con with equal serenity, and always iind in the laws some text or other in their favour.* It may be said,

the lawyers did not support the pro and the con with " equal serenity,'* or a code of laws, in which, if i\\tt gentlemen had skill and ingenuity, they would not find " some ie^it or other in their favour.'* T.
 * We wonder f if the author ever saw a country, in which

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