Thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift.
Equality before the law
I. Some facts and tendencies in legal administration.
1. The sentence pronounced against a poor man is often very heavy, and that against a rich man very light. In New Jersey a poor man was sentenced to five years of hard labour in prison for stealing a ham; in the same court a rich banker, who had ruined two banks and stolen the money of hundreds of people, received the same sentence.
2. After conviction rich convicts receive favours. In the case just cited the poor man and the rich man went to the same prison. But the poor man was put at hard labour; the rich man was made clerk in the prison library.
3. Rich men have an unfair advantage over poor men when brought to trial. The big fee that hires the eloquent pleader “buys out the law.”
4. Even judges are sometimes corrupt.
5. Juries are accused of taking bribes.
II. The perils of these forms of injustice.
1. They threaten the property and lives of the poor.
2. They weaken the spirit of obedience (Numbers 22:23).
3. They develop the communistic spirit of destruction.
4. We are all unsafe when one poor wretch is unsafe only because he lacks money or friends.
III. The remedies for existing evils.
1. More and better teaching, in home, school, and church, on God’s law of equality.
2. Wiser conversation on such matters when citizens meet together. It is dangerous and unpatriotic to treat the miscarriage of justice as a jest.
3. A sound public opinion should be cultivated by press, pulpit, and platform.
4. Our social power may be used to condemn a triumph over the law.
5. Seek to associate in all minds the idea of obedience to God with that of just judgment. (Homiletic Monthly.)
An upright judge
Judge Sewall, of Massachusetts, went into a hatter’s shop in order to purchase a pair of shoe brushes. The master of the shop presented him with a couple. “What is your price?” said the judge. “If they will answer your purpose,” replied the other, “you may have them and welcome.” The judge, upon hearing this, laid them down, and bowing, was leaving the shop; upon which the hatter said to him, “Pray, sir, your honour has forgotten the principal object of your visit.” “By no means,” answered the judge; “if you please to set a price, I am ready to purchase; but ever since it has fallen to my lot to occupy a seat on the bench, I have studiously avoided receiving to the value of a single copper, lest at some future period of my life it might have some kind of influence in determining my judgment.”
The acceptance of bribes discouraged
In the Soudan, he said, he had £6000 a year, as Governor, but he brought nothing out of the country when he returned to England. He spent his income in adding to the insufficient salaries of the officials, to keep them from accepting bribes, and thus to secure justice for the people at large. (Memoir of General Gordon.)