View unsuspecting Innocence a prey,
As guileful Fraud points out the erring way:
While subtle Litigation’s pliant tongue
The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong.

(“On the Death of Robert Dundas, Esq., of Arniston, Late Lord President of the Court of Session”, reprinted in Harvard Classics, Bartleby.com). Matthew Arnold did not find the poem an impressive example of Burns’s art (scroll to #31).