He now found that his conversation was getting too heavy, and would fain have dropped it; but the other urged him somewhat warmly with, "Their laws, sir--their laws! their courts of justice!" and Burrel resolved that he should not rest even upon that.
"As to their courts," he replied, "I have been in many, and never did I see the forms of justice so completely mocked. The judge renders himself a party, and that party the accuser. The unhappy man who is to be tried, placed on an elevated station in the face of all the court, is himself cross-examined, and tortured by interrogations without end; every tittle of the evidence against him is urged upon him by the judge: he is obliged to answer and to plead to the accusation of each witness on the adverse part, and woe be to him if he trip in the smallest particular! If ever there was a plan invented for condemning the innocent and the timid, and letting the guilty and the daring escape, it is that of a French trial. The only security is in the individual integrity and discrimination of the judges--in general most exemplary men."
"That may be all very true, sir," replied the other, who, like many of our countrymen, had been talked into believing the French system very fine, without ever taking the trouble of examining accurately what the French system is--"that may be all very true; but yet their laws, sir--their laws!"
"I think," replied Burrel, more calmly than he had before spoken; for the common-place absurdity of the other's commendation of what he did not understand, had thrown even his cool mind off its guard--"I think, if you will take the trouble of reading the book which contains their codes, you will find that it is confined both in scope and detail; and to show how iniquitous as well as absurd their laws are, we have only to look at their law of succession, which prevents a man from disposing of his property at his death, according to his own judgment and inclination, whether he have acquired it by his personal labor or by inheritance."
"A foolish law it is, indeed," said Dr. Wilton, who had been listening attentively; "and would be a disgrace to the common sense of any nation under the sun."
"Already," continued Burrel, "although the time since its enactment has been so short--it is beginning to paralyze industry and commerce in France--to degrade the higher orders, and to starve the lower."