their hearts, and have no opportunity of showing their passion at the bar. Nevertheless, as they do not know what strifes may arise, they appear at the hall every day, that they may show themselves in readiness to enter the lists whenever there shall be occasion for them. The peaceable lawyers are, in the first place, many of the benchers of the several inns of court, who seem to be the dignitaries of the law, and are endowed with those qualifications of mind that accomplish a man rather for a ruler than a pleader. These men live peaceably in their habitations, eating once a day, and dancing once a year, for the honor of their respective societies. Another numberless branch of peaceable lawyers are those young men, who, being placed at the inns of court in order to study the laws of their country, frequent the playhouse more than Westminster Hall, and are seen in all public assemblies except in a court of justice."

We might well take comfort to ourselves if we met with no severer critic than the gentle Addison.

SWIFT.

Gulliver, in the "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms," gives the following caustic account of law and lawyers : —

"There was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbor has a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, of law that any man should

it being against all rules speak for himself. Now,

in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practiced almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will. The second disadvantage is, that my lawyer must proceed with great caution, or else he will be reprimanded by the judges, and abhorred by his brethren, as one who would lessen the practice of the law. And therefore I have but two methods to preserve my cow. The first is, to gain over my adversary's lawyer with a double fee, who will then betray his client by insinuating that he has justice on his side. The second way is, for my lawyer to make my cause appear as unjust as he can, by allowing the cow to belong to my adversary; and this, if it be skilfully done, will certainly bespeak the favor of the bench. Now, your honor is to know that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office. It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever has been done before may legally be done again; and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities

to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly. In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the cause, but are loud, violent, and tedious in dwelling upon all circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case already mentioned, they never desire to know what claim or title my adversary has to my cow, but whether the said cow were red or black, her horns long or short, whether the field I graze her in be round or square, whether she was milked at home or abroad, what diseases she is subject to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years come to an issue. It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong: so that it will take thirty years to decide whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or a stranger three hundred miles off. In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the State, the method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang or save a criminal; strictly preserving all forms of law."

In the "Voyage to Brobdingnag," Swift makes the king inquire as to courts of law: "Upon what I said in relation to our courts of justice, his majesty desired to be satisfied in several points; and this I was the better able to do, having been formerly almost ruined by a long

suit in chancery, which was decreed for me with costs." He asked "what time was usually spent in determining between right and wrong, and what degree of expense? Whether advocates and orators had liberty to plead in causes manifestly known to be unjust, vexatious, or oppressive? Whether party, in religion or politics, were observed to be of any weight in the scale of justice? Whether those pleading orators were persons educated in the general knowledge of equity, or only in provincial, national, and other local customs? Whether they or

their judges had any part in framing those laws which they assumed the liberty of interpreting and glossing upon at their pleasure? Whether they ever had, at different times, pleaded for and against the same cause, and cited precedents to prove contrary opinions? Whether they were a rich or a poor corporation? Whether they received any pecuniary reward for pleading, or delivering their opinions? And particularly, whether they were ever admitted as members in the lower senate?"

He also makes the king afterward say that he has proved "that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them."

In speaking of the laws of that country, he says no one of them "must exceed in words the number of letters in their alphabet, which consist only of two and twenty. But indeed few of them extend even to that length. They are expressed in the most plain and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial enough to discover above one interpretation; and to write a comment upon any law is a capital crime."

In treating of the way in which they unravel plots in Laputa, and of the concealed significance of sundry signs and emblems in treasonable communications, he says a broken reed stands for a court of justice.

It is supposed that Swift's hostility to lawyers was owing to the vexatious prosecutions of the printers and publishers of his "Drapier Letters."

BISHOP WARBURTON,

in speaking of the character of Cicero, in "The Divine Legation of Moses," observes, "As an orator he was an advocate for his client, or more properly, personated him. Here, then, without question, he was to feign and dissemble his own opinions, and to speak those of his client. And though some of those who call themselves casuists have held it unlawful for an advocate to defend what he thinks an ill cause, yet I apprehend it to be the natural right of every member of society, whether accusing or accused, to speak freely and fully for himself, and if, either by a legal or natural incapacity, this cannot be done in person, to have a proxy provided or allowed by the state to do for him what he can not or may not do for himself. I apprehend that all states have done it, and that every advocate is such a proxy. Tully, therefore, feigning or dissembling his own opinions under this character, acted, I say, neither a weak nor an unfair part."

JOHNSON.

Sam Johnson had some good ideas about law as about most other subjects. When the goose, Boswell, said to him, that a gay friend had advised him against being a lawyer, because he would be excelled by plodding block