Note 33 — Chapter LXXI · THE HISTORY OF TIM THE SNAMMER. (continued 2)

There is something uncommonly barbarous in many of our institutions and customs. Were it not associated with such solemn occasions, we should laugh at the mountebank piece of solemn humbug of the black cap—as if the Judge himself could not assume a demeanour serious and dignified enough for the awful and atrocious duty which the law imposes upon him in pronouncing death sentences. The custom of Judges and barristers disfiguring themselves in huge wigs is a mere relic of barbarism, and unworthy of a civilized age. If the law cannot maintain its solemn majesty without such wretched aids, heaven knows there must be something radically wrong either in the constitution of the tribunals themselves or in the conduct of the functionaries of justice. Away with all such mockeries and fools'-play as wigs and black caps, and let men distribute the justice of men as men, and not muffled up and disguised like old women. The maintenance of all customs which our barbarian ancestors handed down to us shows an aversion to progress on the part of the Government and the Legislature. The wisdom of those ancestors existed, we imagine, only in the wig: let the wisdom of the present day show itself by the fact of discarding all useless pomp and vain ostentation.