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to endeavor to surprise the judge and mislead the jury? To employ learning and lungs and elocution to such purposes as these, is to disgrace the bar, and mismanage to a high degree.

Philot. Must the counsel start at every dark appearance, and the client be dismissed at the first information? that is hard: a cause which has an ill face at first, clears up sometimes in the court, and brightens strangely upon the proceedings. This observation prevailed with Sir Matthew Hale to discharge his scruples, and practise with more freedom.

Philal. I grant this reverend judge relaxed a little, and gave his conscience more reason you mention. When his business lay at the bar, he made no difficulty to venture through suspicion and dislike: he thought it no fault to bring the matter to an issue, and try the strength of either party. But when he once found it work foul and shrink under the test, he would engage no further, nor ever encourage the keeping on the dispute.

Philot. What then: must a man turn away his clients and baulk his profession?

Philal. It is no part of a lawyer's profession to promote injustice, or help one man to that which belongs to another. The laws are made to secure property, to put an end to contests, and help those to right that suffer wrong. They were never designed to entangle matters, to perpetuate quarrels, to enrich any set of men at the damage of the community. To engage in an ill cause, when I am conscious it is so, is, in plain English, to encourage a litigious humor, to countenance a knave: it is to do my best to disseize an honest man of his birthright, and wrest his money or his land from him. If the privi

lege of practice, if the pretence of taking a fee, will justify us in this liberty, why may not the consideration of money bear us out in other remarkable instances? Why may we not be hired for any other mischief? Why may not a physician take a fee of one man to poison another?”

BAXTER,

in his "Christian Directory," giving directions to lawyers about their duty to God, says, "Be not counsellors or advocates against God; that is, against justice, truth, or innocency. A bad cause would have no patrons if there were no bad or ignorant lawyers. It is a dear-bought fee which is got by sinning, especially by such a wilful, aggravated sin as the deliberate pleading for iniquity, or opposing of the truth. Whatever you say or do against truth and innocency and justice, you do it against God himself. And is it not a sad case, that among professing Christians there is no cause so bad but can find an advocate for a fee? I speak not against just counsel to a man that has a bad cause (to tell him it is bad and persuade him to disown it), nor do I speak against you for pleading against excessive penalties or damages; for so far your cause is good, though the main cause of your client was bad: but he that speaketh or counselleth another for the defence of sin, or the wronging of the innocent, or the defrauding another of his right, and will open his mouth to the injury of the just, for a little money, or for a friend, must try whether that money or friend will save him from the vengeance of the Universal Judge (unless faith and true repentance, which will cause confession and restitution, do prevent it). To deal freely

with you counsellors, it is a matter that they who are strangers to your profession can scarce put any fair construction upon, that the worst cause, for a little money, should find an advocate among you! This driveth the standers-by upon this harsh dilemma, to think that either your understandings or your consciences are very bad. If, indeed, you so little know a good cause from a bad, then it must needs tempt men to think you very unskilled in your profession. But when almost every cause, even the worst, that comes to the bar, shall have some of you for it, and some against it; and in the palpablest causes you are some on one side and some on the other, the strange difference of your judgments doth seem to betray your weakness. But if you know the causes to be bad which you defend, and to be good which you oppose, it more evidently betrays a deplorable conscience. I speak not of your innocent or excusable mistakes in cases of great difficulty, nor yet of excusing a cause bad in the main from unjust aggravations; but when money will hire you to plead for injustice against your own knowledge, and to use your will to defraud the righteous, and spoil his cause, or vex him with delays for the advantage of your unrighteous client, I would not have your conscience for all your gains, nor your account to make for all the world."

I must admit, it is to be feared that lawyers are too much like other men, no better than clergymen, for instance, either in judgment or conscience. If there is any efficacy in a particular creed, the vast majority of clergymen must be damned for not being wise enough to believe it; and observation teaches us that they are subject to pecuniary influences, for which I do not say they are

to be blamed. We live, not in a "Saints' Rest," but in a sinful world; and Baxter is not set to scold Matthew Hale.

RICHE,

in "The Honestie of this Age, proving by good circumstance that the World was never Honest till now," has the following: —

"Shall we yet make a steppe to Westminster Hall, a little to ouer-look the lawyers? My skill is vnable to render due reuerence to the honorable judges according to their worthinesse, but especially at this instant, as the benches are nowe supplyed: neyther would I eclips the honest reputation of a number of learned lawyers, that are to be held in a reuerent regard, and that are to be honoured and esteemed; yet amongst these there be a number of others that doe multiplie sutes, and drawe on quarrelles betweene friend and friend, betweene brother and brother, and sometimes betweene the father and sonne; and amongst these, although there bee some that can make good shift to send their clients home with penilesse purses, yet there be other some againe, that at the end of the tearme, doe complaine themselves that their gettings have not bin enough to defray their expences, and doe therefore thinke that men are become to be more wise in these dayes then they have beene in former ages, and had rather put uppe a wrong then fee a lawyer; but I doe not thinke there is any such wisedome in this age, when there are so many wrangling spirits that are ready to commence suites, but for a neighbour's goose, that shall but happen to looke ouer a hedge: now what conceipt I have in the matter I will partly make manifest by this insuing circumstance:

"As the worthy gentlemen that haue beene Lords Maiors of the honourable cittie of London have beene generally renowned for their wisedome in gouernment, so they have beene no lesse famed for their hospitality and good housekeeping during the time of their Mairolties. Amongst the rest, there was one who long sithens being readie to set himselfe downe to his dinner with his company that were about him, there thronged in on the sodaine a great company of strangers in that onreuerent manner as had not formerly beene accustomed, whereupon one of the officers, comming to the L. Maior, sayd onto him, 'If it please your lordship, here be too few stooles.' 'Thou lyest, knave,' answered the Maior. 'There are too many guests.'

"Now I am perswaded that if lawyers (indeed) haue iust cause to complaine of their little gettings, it is not for that there be too few suites, but because there be too many lawyers, especially of these aturnies, soliciters, and such other petty Foggers, whereof there be such abundance that the one of them can hardly thrive by the other; and this multitude of them doe trouble all the partes of Englande.

"The profession of the Law I doe acknowledge to be honorable, and (I thinke) the study of it should especially belong to the better sort of gentlemen: but our Innes of Court now (for the greater part) are stuffed with the ofspring of farmers, and with all other sorts of tradesmen ; and these, when they haue gotten some few scrappings of the law, they do sow the seedes of suites, they doe set men at variance, and doe seeke for nothing more then to checke the course of iustice by their delatory pleas for the better sort of the learned lawyers, I doe honour them.

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