Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/368

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¬turned to, he frequently discovered that the last decision was clogged with exceptions which supported neither, but that, by still looking on- ward, he could shew me how it was settled at last; — he accordingly found some of his cases, but they had many times stood over for another argument, and had never been decided. ¬In this way he went on, until he was driven in the end to admit, that if a young man were to begin to read all the books of their laws, written and unwritten, public and private, on his first entering their courts, he would be super- annuated before he got through them. ¬I confess I retired from this scene severely mortified, because no words can convey an idea of the extreme wisdom of their whole constitu- tion; and I cannot here help imploring the par- liament of my own country to guard against this worst of evils, before it reaches, as in Ar- mata, to such a dreadful extent, that time alone, without either errors or abuses, must -destroy ¬