now brought, had some few imperfections in his magistratical capacity.
I own, I have been sometimes inclined to think that this office of a
justice of peace requires some knowledge of the law: for this simple
reason; because, in every case which comes before him, he is to judge
and act according to law. Again, as these laws are contained in a
great variety of books, the statutes which relate to the office of a
justice of peace making of themselves at least two large volumes in
folio; and that part of his jurisdiction which is founded on the
common law being dispersed in above a hundred volumes, I cannot
conceive how this knowledge should by acquired without reading; and
yet certain it is, Mr. Thrasher never read one syllable of the matter.

This, perhaps, was a defect; but this was not all: for where mere
ignorance is to decide a point between two litigants, it will always
be an even chance whether it decides right or wrong: but sorry am I to
say, right was often in a much worse situation than this, and wrong
hath often had five hundred to one on his side before that magistrate;
who, if he was ignorant of the law of England, was yet well versed in
the laws of nature. He perfectly well understood that fundamental
principle so strongly laid down in the institutes of the learned
Rochefoucault, by which the duty of self-love is so strongly enforced,
and every man is taught to consider himself as the centre of gravity,
and to attract all things thither. To speak the truth plainly, the
justice was never indifferent in a cause but when he could get nothing
on either side.

Such was the justice to whose tremendous bar Mr. Gotobed the
constable, on the day above mentioned, brought several delinquents,
who, as we have said, had been apprehended by the watch for diverse
outrages.