22. I have hitherto supposed, that all causes when they are decided, are decided according to justice and equity. But is it so? Ye learned in the law, is no _unjust sentence_ given in your courts? Have not the same causes been decided quite opposite ways? One way, this term, just the contrary, the next? Perhaps one way in the morning (this I remember an instance of) and another way in the afternoon. How is this? Is there no _justice_ left on earth? No regard for right or wrong? Or have causes been puzzled so long, that you know not now, what is either wrong or right? What is agreeable to law, or contrary to it? I have heard some of you frankly declare, that it is in many cases next impossible to know, what is law, and what is not. So are your _folio_’s of law multiplied upon you, that no human brain is able to contain them: no; nor any consistent scheme, or abstract of them all. But is it really owing to _ignorance_ of the law, (this is the most _favourable_ supposition) that so few of you scruple _taking fees_ on either side, of almost any cause that can be conceived? And that you generally plead in the manner you do on any side of any cause? Rambling to and fro, in a way so abhorrent from common sense, and so utterly foreign to the question? I have been amazed at hearing the pleadings of some eminent council: and when it has fallen out that the pleader on the other side understood only the common rules of logic, he has made those eminent men appear, either such egregious knaves, if they could help it, or such egregious blockheads, if they could not, that one would have believed they would shew their face there no more.――――Mean time, if there be a God that judgeth righteously, what horrid insults upon him are these! _Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged of such a nation as this!_ 23. There is one instance more of (I know not what to term it) injustice, oppression, sacrilege, which hath long cried aloud in the ears of God. For among men, who doth hear? I mean the management of many of those who are intrusted with our public charities. By the pious munificence of our fore-fathers, we have abundance of these, of various kinds. But is it not glaringly true, (to touch only on a few generals) that the managers of many of them, either 1. Do not apply the benefaction to _that use_ for which it was designed by the benefactor, or 2. Do not apply it with such _care and frugality_, as in such a case are indispensably required: or 3. Do not apply the whole of the benefaction to any _charitable use_ at all; but ♦_secrete_ part thereof, from time to time, for the use of themselves and their families. Or, lastly, by plain, bare-faced oppression, _exclude_ those from having any part in such benefaction, who dare (though with all possible tenderness and respect) set before them the things that they have done: