Xxv.—: A just man falling before the wicked, is a troubled fountain and a corrupted spring

This is a caution to states, that they should have a capital regard to the passing an unjust or infamous sentence in any great and weighty cause, where not only the guilty is acquitted, but the innocent condemned. To countenance private injuries, indeed, disturbs and pollutes the clear streams of justice, as it were, in the brook; but unjust and great public sentences, which are afterward drawn into precedents, infect and defile the very fountain of justice. For when once the court goes on the side of injustice, the law becomes a public robber, and one man really a wolf to another.