Two curious economical questions arise laterally with respect to this branch of law, namely, the cost of crime and the cost of judgment. The cost of crime is endured by nations ignorantly, not being clearly stated in their budgets; the cost of judgment patiently (provided only it can be had pure for the money), because the science, or perhaps we ought rather to say the art, of law, is felt to found a noble profession, and discipline; so that civilized nations are usually glad that a number of persons should be supported by funds devoted to disputation and analysis. But it has not yet been calculated what the practical value might have been, in other directions, of the intelligence now occupied in deciding, through courses of years, what might have been decided as justly, had the date of judgment been fixed, in as many hours. Imagine one half of the funds which any great nation devotes to dispute by law, applied to the determination of physical questions in medicine, agriculture, and theoretic science; and calculate the probable results within the next ten years.
I say nothing yet, of the more deadly, more lamentable loss, involved in the use of purchased instead of personal justice,—