XXII. With regard to this last circumstance, when there are not other reasons to forbid it, the poor should be dispatched in preference to the rich; and those who come from distant provinces, before those who live in the neighbourhood. St. Jerome, in his comment on a passage of the Proverbs, says, that formerly courts of justice were placed at the gates of cities; which the Saint imagines to have been done, with a view of preventing the attention of strangers who come upon law business, and especially that of the rustics, from being taken up and confounded by the multitude of strange objects which present themselves to their sight, and by the bustle and hurry of the city; from hence it may be inferred, that the dispatch was very quick, and that it was not necessary for them to take a lodging in town; but things are greatly altered now-a-days, and strangers who come from a great distance to prosecute their causes, are detained so long, that they in a manner become neighbours and inhabitants of the city. Nothing is so pernicious as the amazing delays of judicial proceedings; as formerly, they saw the tribunals at the gates of great towns, at present, we see intire towns built round the gates of the tribunals, because the slowness of dispatch increases the bulk of the causes in the office, and the number of suitors in and about the office-porch. XXIII. I reflect with horror on the mischiefs which these delays occasion; for in consequence of the expence they create, it frequently happens that both the suitors are ruined, the vanquished is stripped and laid prostrate, and the conqueror has spent his all. There are litigations, which last as long as the four elements in man, that is to say, for the whole course of his life; and the result of them is the same, the ruin of the whole. O terminations of law! you appear like the boundaries of the world in the opinion of Descartes, that is, indefinite. XXIV. Even where there is nothing to wait for, and there is no occasion of delay, the cause is sometimes suspended for months together. My Son, you are not ignorant of the rule of law laid down by Sextus Pomponius, which says, in the discharge of all our obligations, where there is no particular day prescribed or assigned for dispatching a business, we should make use of the present day. The practice of all tribunals should be conformable to this rule, and when things are prepared for trial, the decision should not be delayed a day, and the Judges should direct, that the preparations are made with all the expedition possible.