ber holds no manner of proportion with the infinite diversity of human actions; the multiplication of our inventions will never arrive at the variety of examples; add to these a hundred times as many more, it will still not happen, that of events to come there shall one be found that in this vast number of millions of events so chosen and recorded, shall so tally with any other one, and be so exactly coupled and matched with it, that there will not remain some circumstance and diversity which will require a diverse judgment. There is little relation between our actions, which are in perpetual mutation, and fixed and immutable laws; the most to be desired are the most rare, the most simple and general: and I am even of opinion that we had better have none at all than to have them in so prodigious number as we have. Nature always gives them better and happier than those we make ourselves; witness the picture of the Golden Age of the poets, and the state wherein we see nations live who have no other: some there are who for their only judge take the first passer-by who travels along their mountains, to determine their cause; and others, who, on their market-day, choose out some one amongst them on the spot to decide their controversies. What danger would there be that the wisest among us should so determine ours, according to occurrences, and at sight, without obligation of example and consequence?"

Of the permanence of laws: "It is a very great doubt whether any so manifest benefit can accrue from the alteration of a law received, let it be what it will, as there is danger and inconvenience in altering it."

Of the origin of laws: "Laws derive their authority from possession and use; 'tis dangerous to trace them

back to their beginning; they grow great, and ennoble themselves, like our rivers by running: follow them upward to their source; 'tis but a little spring, scarce discernible, that swells thus, and fortifies itself by growing old."

MORE

himself, in his youth, wrote a poem entitled "A Merry Jest: how a Sergeant would learn to play the Friar." He sets out by inculcating the idea that it is unsafe for a man to go outside his peculiar vocation, - ne sutor

ultra crepidem," and applies this to lawyers and merchants:

"A man of law

That never saw

The ways to buy and sell,

Weening to rise

By merchandise,

I

pray

God speed him well.

A merchant eke,

That will go seek,

By all the means he may,

To fall in suit

Till he dispute
His money clean away;
Pleading the law

For every straw,

Shall prove a thrifty man,
With 'bate and strife,

But by my life

I cannot tell you whan."

The story is long and dull. In a word, the sergeant disguised himself as a friar, in order to procure access to a debtor in hiding, who feigned sickness, and, drawing

out his mace to enforce his process, was attacked by the debtor and his wife and maid-servant, and thrown down stairs.

More did not tolerate lawyers in his "Utopia." "They have no lawyers among them," he says, "for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters as well as to arrest laws; and, therefore, they think it is much better that every man should plead his own cause and trust it to the judge, as well as in other places the client does it to a counsellor. By this means, they both cut off many delays, and find out truth more certainly. For after the parties have laid open the merits of their cause, without those artifices which lawyers are apt to suggest, the judge examines the whole matter, and supports the simplicity of such well-meaning persons, whom otherwise crafty man would be apt to run down. And thus they avoid those evils which appear very remarkably among all those nations that labor under a vast load of laws."

SIDNEY.

While our profession are popularly accused of bad manners, it is gratifying to learn that Sir Philip Sidney, that soul of honor and entire gentleman, held us in the estimation indicated in the following extract from "An Apologie for Poetrie:

"And for the Lawyer, though Fus bee the daughter of Justice, and Justice the chiefe of Vertues, yet because hee seeketh to make men good, rather Formidine pænæ, than Virtutis amore, or to say righter, dooth not endeavor to make men good, but that their evill hurt not others; having no care so hee be a good Cittizen, how bad a man

he be. Therefore, as our wickednesse maketh him necessarie, and necessitie maketh him honorable, so is he not in the deepest trueth to stande in rancke with these, who all indeavour to take naughtines away, and plant goodnesse even in the secretest cabinet of our souls? And these foure are all that any way deale in that consideration of men's manners, which beeing the Supreme knowledge, they that best breed it deserve the best commendation."

The other three of "these foure" are the poet, the historian, and the philosopher. Pretty good company for men of bad manners, truly! Sir Philip farther on discusses the nice point whether poets are blameworthy for giving names to men they write of, and thus arguing a conceit of an actual truth: “And doth the Lawyer lye then," says he, “when under the names of John a Stile and John a Noakes hee puts his case?" But poetry, he acknowledges, may be abused, and so may law: "Dooth not knowledge of Law, whose end is to even and right all things, being abused, grow the crooked fosterer of horrible injuries?"

COSIN.

The following "Lawyer's Creed" might be in danger of being considered blasphemous if it had been written by a layman; but as the work of Dr. John Cosin, a prelate of the seventeenth century, I suppose it is entirely orthodox:

"Credo in dominum Judicem pro arbitrio statuentem; In Attornatum meum, omnium litium creatorem ;

Et in duodecim viros in cassibus nostris nihil intelligentes.

·

Credo Westmonasteriensem Aulam esse Ecclesiam Catho

licam ;

Statua omnia, prohibitiones, decreta, et reportus, esse traditiones apostolicas;

Sed omnes lites futuras esse æternas;

Et nullam esse debitorum remissionem;

Si plus velis,

Credo omnes academias et artes humaniores esse abolendas, in secula seculorum, Amen.”

As an offset, I quote the following from an early volume of "The Gentleman's Magazine,”. a fitting receptacle for such enlightened sentiments: "The Portion of a Just Lawyer. Whilst he lives, he is the Delight of the Court, the Ornament of the Bar, a Pattern of Innocency, the Glory of his Profession, a Terror to Deceit, the Oracle of his Country. And when Death calls him to the Bar of Heaven, by the De habendo corpus cum causa, he finds the Judge his Advocate, nonsuits the Devil, and continues one of the Long Robe in Glory."

BISHOP COLLYER,

in his moral essays, has the following dialogue :

"Philotimus. Pray, what is your opinion of those lawyers who appear in a foul cause?

To

Philalethes. I think if they know it they misbehave themselves, and have much to answer for. What can be more unaccountable than to solicit against justice, and lend the credit of our character to an ill business? throw in dilatory pleas and false suggestions, to perplex the argument or entangle the witness? To make a mercenary noise against right or reason? To misapply precedents and statutes, and draw the laws into a conspiracy,