John Gay Quotes
I know you lawyers can with ease, Twist words and meanings as you please; That language, by your skill made pliant, Will bend to favour every client; That 'tis the fee directs the sense, To make out either side's pretense.
Gay, John. Fables. Volume the Second. J. and P. Knapton, 1738, p. 1.
At the time, it was relatively easy to find some sympathetic judge who saw labor unions as a menace, to issue an injunction forbidding a strike. It would take weeks, months and often years in those days to get to higher courts for appeals so this was a common strike breaking technique. That was the immediate stimulus for the statement. However it has been true generally. Almost all tyrannies operate under the cloak and authority of a judiciary and legal system which they control or is intimidated. 25 years after this quotation the world would see the worst example when the German judiciary supported and found legal all the Nazi excesses including the holocaust.
In most societies the wealthy have been able to control or influence the laws. Even in industrial democracies the rich have more influence over the laws than the rest of the population. At times in America it was only the wealthy who were educated and participated in government. Later the rich bribed legislators. In modern times the primary mechanism is campaign contributions but bribery is still a factor.
He had been reporting from Egypt at the time. There was no judicial independence, and the judges were generally corrupt and incompetent. The system operated as a tradeoff. The government would not investigate and punish the corruption and bribery in the private cases if the judges would always rule for the government in the cases they brought. The system was particularly pernicious in that Egypt did not depend on the jury of peers system so the judges had great power in judicial proceedings.
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera (1728), a ballad opera. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum, became household names.
