e, many of them, either bought or
inherited their practice. Under a system of purchase, we should be
judged by lawyers of whom we required more extensive legal knowledge
than is at present required of the profession. We should be judged in
fact by solicitors and advocates of a superior order. There is nothing
very alarming about that.

Montesquieu was in favour of a system of purchase. Voltaire opposed it
strongly. They were both right and were indeed agreed on general
principles. Montesquieu says: "Venality,--the purchase system,--is a
good thing under a monarchical form of government, because work which
would not be done from mere civic virtue is then undertaken as a family
business. Each man's duty is laid down for him, and the orders of the
State are given greater permanence. Suidas says very aptly of Anastasius
that he turned the Empire into an aristocracy by selling magisterial
offices."

Voltaire replies: "Is it as a matter of civic virtue that in England a
judge of the King's Bench accepts his appointment?" (It is either a
matter of civic virtue or of profit and interest, and if it is not
profit, it certainly must require considerable civic virtue.) "What! can
we not find men in France willing to judge if we bestow their
appointments upon them gratuitously?" (We certainly can: but they might
be too grateful!) "Can the work of administering justice, disposing of
the lives and fortunes of men, become a family business?" (Well, the
business of bearing arms and disposing of men's lives and fortunes in
civil war was in 1760 a family business. So too the business of being
king, and you do not protest against that!) "It is a pity that
Montesquieu should dishonour his work by such paradoxes, but we must
forgive him; his uncle purchased a provincial magistrate's office and
left it to him. Human nature comes in everywhere. None of us is without
weaknesses."

Montesquieu thinks aristocratic bodies are good things. Voltaire is in
favour of absolute power. Montesquieu would like the judicature to be a
family office, that is to say hereditary like the profession of a
soldier; this would make the judicial profession permanent like other
professions. He demonstrates, as does Suidas, that the purchase system
creates an aristocracy. Voltaire, like Napoleon I., would make his
soldiers, his priests, and his judges, king's men. They should all
belong to the king, body and soul.

Montesquieu had a greater antagonist than Voltair