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Utopia by Saint Sir Thomas More
page 86 of 118 (72%)
The Prince himself has no distinction, either of garments or of a crown;
but is only distinguished by a sheaf of corn carried before him; as the
High Priest is also known by his being preceded by a person carrying a
wax light.

"They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need
not many. They very much condemn other nations whose laws, together with
the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes; for they think it
an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both
of such a bulk, and so dark as not to be read and understood by every one
of the subjects.

"They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of
people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest the laws,
and, therefore, they think it is much better that every man should plead
his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as in other places the client
trusts it to a counsellor; by this means they both cut off many delays
and find out truth more certainly; for after the parties have laid open
the merits of the cause, without those artifices which lawyers are apt to
suggest, the judge examines the whole matter, and supports the simplicity
of such well-meaning persons, whom otherwise crafty men would be sure to
run down; and thus they avoid those evils which appear very remarkably
among all those nations that labour under a vast load of laws. Every one
of them is skilled in their law; for, as it is a very short study, so the
plainest meaning of which words are capable is always the sense of their
laws; and they argue thus: all laws are promulgated for this end, that
every man may know his duty; and, therefore, the plainest and most
obvious sense of the words is that which ought to be put upon them, since
a more refined exposition cannot be easily comprehended, and would only
serve to make the laws become useless to the greater part of mankind, and
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