'Publicly to countenance and promote injustice is a most odious and pernicious action.
'Consequently, to make a law is a most odious and pernicious action.
'How unlimited are the moral mischiefs that result! To make positive laws is to turn the mind from the inquiry into what is just, and compel it to inquire what is law!
'To make positive laws is to habituate and reconcile the mind to injustice, by stamping injustice with public approbation!
'To make positive laws is to deaden the mind to that constant and lively sense of what is just and unjust, to which it must otherwise be invariably awake, by not only encouraging but by obliging it to have recourse to rules founded in falsehood!
'Each case is law to itself: that is, each case ought to be decided by the justice, or the injustice arising out of the circumstances of that individual case; and by no other case or law whatever; for the reason I have already given, that there never were nor ever can be two cases that were not different from each other.
'I therefore once more warn you, Mr. Trevor, that law is a pernicious mass of errors; and that the practitioners of it can only thrive by the mischiefs which they themselves produce, the falsehoods they propagate, and the miseries they inflict!'
'This would be dangerous doctrine to the preacher, were it heard in
Westminster hall.'
'I am sorry for it! I am sorry that man can be in danger from his fellow men, because he endeavours to do them good!'