Quote#Politics & Power
Next, bring some lawyers to thy bar
Quote byDaniel Defoe · 1660–1731
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Hymn to the Pillory (1703)..
English (original)
Next, bring some lawyers to thy bar, By innuendo they might all stand there; There let them expiate that guilt, And pay for all that blood their tongues have spilt. These are the mountebanks of state, Who by the sleight of tongues can crimes create, And dress up trifles in the robes of fate, The mastiffs of a Government, To worry and run down the innocent.
— Daniel Defoe
More from Daniel Defoe
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All men would be tyrants if they could.
We loved the doctrine for the teacher's sake.
Alas the Church of England! What with Popery on one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between two thieves!
Reason, it is true, is DICTATOR in the Society of Mankind; from her there ought to lie no Appeal; But here we want a Pope in our Philosophy, to be the infallible Judge of what is or is not Reason.
The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late.