Gracious Sovereign!

You did not suppose that anyone would be curious to know who we are: yet there are people who try to guess it, but they are all mistaken. Some think I am a doctor of the Sorbonne, others attribute my letters to four or five persons who, like me, are neither priests nor spiritual. All these unfortunate conjectures make me think that I have succeeded in making my intention of being known only to you and to the good priest, who still endures my visits, and whose speeches I also endure, though with great difficulty. But I must overpower myself, for he would not go on if he noticed that it was so offensive to me; and then I could not keep the word I gave you, promising to expound a casuistic moral. Believe me, you must credit me with some merit for the violence that I commit against myself. It is very difficult to see how the entire Christian teaching on morality is overthrown by such strange errors, and not dare to contradict it openly. But, having endured so much for your satisfaction, I think that at last I shall burst out to satisfy myself when he has nothing left to say to me. In the meantime, I will restrain myself as much as possible, because the more I remain silent, the more he tells. The last time he told me so much that it would be difficult to convey everything to you. You will get acquainted with very convenient principles that exempt from returns. For, however much he may try to make his rules plausible, those of which I shall now speak to you serve only to indulge corrupt judges, usurers, bankrupts, thieves, fallen women, and sorcerers; all of them are exempt within fairly wide limits from the return of what each of them obtains by his trade. This is what the good father made me understand in the next conversation.

"From the very beginning of our conversations," he said, "I undertook to explain to you the rules of our authors for provisions of all kinds. You have already become acquainted with those that pertain to the holders of ecclesiastical places, to priests, monks, servants, and nobles: let us now take a quick look at the rest, and begin with the judges.

I will first point out to you one of the most important and advantageous rules, which our fathers teach in their favor. It belongs to our scholar Castro Palao, one of our twenty-four elders. Here are his words: "Can a judge decide a legal issue on the basis of a probable opinion, without adhering to the opinion of the most probable? Of course he is, and even against his own conviction: Imo contra propriam opiniopet." The same is given by our Father Escobar (tr. 6, pr. 6, M 45).

"Here, my father," I said to him, "is a wonderful beginning! The judges ought to be very much indebted to you, and I find it very strange that they should oppose your probabilities, as we have sometimes observed, since the latter are so favourable to them: for you thereby give them the same power over the property of men as you have arrogated to yourself over the consciences.

"You see," he said, "that it is not self-interest that guides us, we have taken into account only the tranquillity of their consciences; and to this our great Molina contributed so much by his labors on the offerings offered to the judges. Thus, in order to save them from all the contemptugation of conscience which might arise in deciding whether to take in certain cases, he took care to enumerate all the cases in which judges could accept gifts with a clear conscience, unless there was a special law forbidding it. Similar considerations are found in the first volume of the works of the great casuist (tr. 2, p. 88, No 6); Here are his words: "Judges may take gifts from litigants when they offer them, either out of friendship, or out of gratitude for the justice done, or in order to induce them to render it in the future, or to induce them to apply special diligence to a certain case, or to force them to finish the case as soon as possible." Our learned Escobar speaks of this (Tr. 6, Prov. 6, No 43) in the following way: "If there are several persons, none of whom has a greater right to be satisfied before the others, will it be a sin for the judge to take something from one, with an agreement, ex pacto, to satisfy his first? Certainly not, in Lyman's opinion, since, by natural law, he does no injustice to others when he does for one, in gratitude for his offering, what he could do for anyone else whom he pleases; and since he owes equally to all of them the equality of their rights, he even becomes more indebted to him who has given him this gift, which makes him prefer it to others; and this preference seems to be appreciated by money: Quae obligatio videtur pretio aestimabilis."

"My father," I said, "I am surprised at this permission, which is still unknown to the first dignitaries of the kingdom. Thus the First President issued an order in Parliament to prevent certain registrars from receiving money for preferences of this kind, which shows how far he was from thinking of the permissibility of such actions on the part of the judges, and all praised the reform so useful to all workers.

The kind priest, amazed at this message, replied to me:

"Are you telling the truth?" I haven't heard anything about it. Our opinion is only likely, the opposite may also be likely.

"In truth, my father," I said, "it is more than likely that it is good what Mr. First President has done, and that he has thereby stopped the spread of obvious bribery, which has been tolerated for too long.

"I think of it in the same way," said the priest, "but let us give it up, let us do away with the judges."

"You're right," I said, "they don't thank you enough for everything you do for them.

"It is not a point," said the priest, "but there is so much to say about all of them that it is necessary to speak briefly about each one.

Now let's talk about the dealers. You know that the greatest difficulty here is to keep them from covetousness; For this reason our fathers also took special pains, for they hate this vice so much that Escobar says (Tr. 3, Prov. 5, No 1): "Not to consider covetousness a sin is heresy." And our father Boni, in his Summa of Sins (ch. 14), fills several pages with punishments for usurers. He declares that "they are disgraced during their lifetime and unworthy of church burial after death."