Pages from
The Diary of a Philadelphia Lawyer

No. II.

The Counterfeiter

“There’s nought so monstrous, but the mind of man,

In some conditions, may be brought t’ approve.

Theft, sacrilege, treason and parricide,

When flattering opportunity enticed,

And desperation drove, have been committed

By those who once would start to hear them named.”

Lillo’s Fatal Curiosity.

It is a sorrowful fact, that in this country, as in England, the system of roguery and public depredation has arrived to a state of perfection that renders it, in its various branches and classifications, as regular and methodical as almost any one of the various occupations to which mankind, in civilized communities, are devoted.

As in the law, there is the barrister and the sergeant, the advocate and the counsellor, the clerk and the conveyancer; or in medicine, the apothecary and the prescribing physician, the Thompsonian and the Morrissonian, the homoepathist and the… Read More