Remonstrance was vain, and I found I had
burdened myself with an animal, possessing no social or political
influence whatever. I knew already that the world was governed
without wisdom, and I now felt that it was also ruled with extreme
meanness.
And even after my horse was condemned to starve on ten pounds per
annum, the cost of justice was still extravagant. Without reckoning
the expense incurred in erecting and maintaining three court houses,
and three police stations, and paying three policemen for doing next
to nothing, I ascertained from the cause lists that it cost the
Government fourteen pounds sterling every time we fined Terry, the
cobbler, five shillings for being drunk; and Terry did not always pay
the fines. What ails British law is dignity, and the insufferable
expense attending it. The disease will never be cured until a
strong-minded Chief Justice shall be found, who has sense enough to
sit on the bench in his native hair, and to take off his coat when
the thermometer rises to eighty degrees. It was in that manner Judge
Winstanley kept court at Waterloo in Illinois, and we had there
quicker justice, cheaper laws, and better manners than those which
this southern hemisphere yet exhibits. As to the lawyers, if we did
not like them, we could lynch them, so they were sociable and civil.
Moreover, Prairie de Long was discovered and settled nearly twenty
years before Australia Felix was heard of.
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