George Walford: Systematic Ideology (56)

SYSTEMATIC ideology ascribes both institutional religion and the law to the one ideology, that of principle / domination. Richard Hughes, writing on transportation, brings out some of the detailed correspondences.

He likens the rhetoric and diction, the costume and rituals of the judges to those of the priests. In their addresses the judges delivered the equivalent of sermons, full of calls to respentance, reprobation and didactic asides. (Hughes R. 1987 The Fatal Shore; a history of the transportation of convicts to Australia, 1787-1868. London: Collins Harvill, 30).

from Ideological Commentary 56, May 1992.