uence is that
only those who make a profession of the law and live by it and find their
account in having it as little understood by others as is possible can
know which acts and parts of acts are in force and which are not. The
higher courts, too, have arrogated to themselves the power of declaring
unconstitutional even parts of the Constitution, frequently annulling most
important provisions of the very instrument creating them!

A popular folly in Tortirra is the selection of representatives in the
Councils from among that class of men who live by the law, whose sole
income is derived from its uncertainties and perplexities. Obviously, it
is to the interest of these men to make laws which shall be uncertain and
perplexing--to confuse and darken legislation as much as they can. Yet in
nearly all the Councils these men are the most influential and active
element, and it is not uncommon to find them in a numerical majority. It
is evident that the only check upon their ill-doing lies in the certainty
of their disagreement as to the particular kind of confusion which they
may think it expedient to create. Some will wish to accomplish their
common object by one kind of verbal ambiguity, some by another; some by
laws clearly enough (to them) unconstitutional, others by contradictory
statutes, or statutes secretly repealing wholesome ones already existing.
A clear, simple and just code would deprive them of their means of
livelihood and compel them to seek some honest employment.

So great are the uncertainties of the law in Tortirra that an eminent
judge once confessed to me that it was his conscientious belief that if
all cases were decided by the impartial arbitrament of the _do-tusis_ (a
process similar to our "throw of the dice") substantial justice would be
done far more frequently than under the present system; and there is
reason to believe that in many instances cases at law are so decided--but
only at the close of tedious and costly trials which have impoverished the
litigants and correspondingly enriched the lawyers.

Of the interminable train of shames and brutalities entailed by this
pernicious system, I shall mention here only a single one--the sentencing
and punishment of an accused person in the midst of the proceedings
against him, and while his guilt is not finally and definitively
established. It frequently occurs that a man convicted of crime in one of
the lower courts is at once hurried off to prison wh