that decree unrighteous decrees, &c. Better perhaps, that draw up mischievous ordinances and are continually writing oppression. The magnates are addressed not as judges but as legislators; their offence is that they embody injustice in arbitrary written enactments, which enable them to perpetrate the most grievous wrongs under legal forms.

and that write … prescribed The construction is peculiar. The intensive form of the verb "to write" occurs only here.

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