Moreover, lord, I am inform'd your laws
Are grown so large, and daily yet increase,

That the great age of old Mathusalem

Would scarce suffice to read your statutes out."

Queen Ignorance invades the realm, and is supported by the conspirators, including "attorneys all completely arm'd in brass." Queen Common Sense is overcome and slain; but while Ignorance is thanking Law and Physic for their aid, and assuring them that she will not forget their services, the ghost of the dead queen arises, and routs the whole crowd.

Fielding seems to think, however, that there is one occupation more infamous than that of the lawyer: —

"The lawyer who's been

In the pillory seen,

While eggs his complexion made yellow:

Nay, the Devil's to blame,

Or he'll own to his shame,

That a stock-jobber has no fellow."

This, of course, seems extravagant to us in the year 1882.

In "Rape upon Rape, or the Justice caught in his own Trap," we find evidence that law was not, in Fielding's time, administered in the petty tribunals with that purity which now characterizes our justices' courts. Justice Squeezum, and Quill, his clerk, come upon the

Scene:

66

Squeezum. Did mother Bilkum refuse to pay my demands, say you?

Quill. Yes, sir: she says she does not value your worship's protection of a farthing; for that she can bribe

two juries a year to acquit her in Hicks' hall, for half the money which she hath paid you within these three months.

Squeez. Very fine! I shall shew her that I understand something of juries as well as herself. Quill, make a memorandum against mother Bilkum's trial, that we may remember to have the panel No. 3: they are a set of good men, and true, and hearken to no evidence but mine.

Quill. Sir, Mr. Snap, the bailiff's follower, hath set up a shop, and is a freeholder. He hopes your worship will put him into a panel on the first vacancy.

Squeez. Minute him down for No. 2. I think half of that panel are bailiffs' followers. Thank Heaven! the laws have not excluded those butchers.

Quill. No, sir: the law forbids butchers to be jurymen, but does not forbid jurymen to be butchers.

Squeez. Quill, d'ye hear? Look out for some new recruits for the panel No. 1. We shall have a swinging vacancy there the next session. Truly, if we do not take some care to regulate the juries in the Old Bailey, we shall have no juries for Hicks' hall.

Quill. Very true, sir. But that panel hath been more particularly unfortunate. I believe I remember it hanged at least twice over."

Squeezum elsewhere says, "The laws are turnpikes, only made to stop people who walk on foot, and not to interrupt people who drive through them in their carriages. The laws are like a game at loo, where a blaze of court-cards is always secure, and the knaves are the safest cards in the pack."

SHERIDAN,

in "The School for Scandal," has a good idea of the responsibility of slanderers, when he makes Sir Peter Teazle say, "I would have law merchant for them too; and in all cases of slander currency, whenever the drawer of the lie was not to be found, the injured parties should have a right to come on any of the indorsers."

KNOWLES.

In Sheridan Knowles's charming comedy, "The Love Chase," the same old tune is sung by Sir William Fondlove, for whom the lawyers are drawing up a marriage settlement:

"Sir Wil. How many words you take to tell few things! Again, again say over what, said once, Methinks were told enough!

First Lawyer. It is the law

Which labors at precision.

Sir Wil. Yes, and thrives

Upon uncertainty — and makes it, too,
With all its pains to shun it. I could bind
Myself, methinks, with but the twentieth part
Of all this cordage, sirs."

However much men may complain of the verbosity of lawyers in fastening marriage upon them, I believe they are never known to find any fault with waste of words in unfastening the "cordage; " but this is a question fitter for the meridian of Chicago than for

ours.

MISS EDGEWORTH,

also, in her comedy "Love and Law," portrays the litigious spirit of the Irish in an admirable manner. Counsellor O'Blaney says, "In Ireland it would as ill become a gentleman to be any way shy of a law-shute as of a duel." To the suggestion that law is expensive, he answers, "But 'tis the best economy in the end; for, when once you have cast or non-shuted your man in the courts, 'tis as good as winged him in the field. And suppose you don't get sixpence costs, and lose your cool hundred by it, still it's a great advantage; for you are let alone to enjoy your own in pace and quiet ever after, which you could not do in this county without it." Carver, a justice, says, "The poor have nothing to do with the laws.

O'Blaney. Except the penal.

Carver. True, the civil law is for us men of property." Catty Rooney, a termagant, law-loving widow, speaking of a law-suit she has with a neighbor about a bit of bog, says, "I'll drive all the grazing cattle, every foor-footed baast off the land, and pound 'em in Ballynavogue; and if they replevy, why, I'll distrain again: if it be forty times, I will go. I'll go on distraining, and I'll advertise, and I'll cant, and I'll sell the distress at the end of eight days. And if they dare for to go for to put a plough in that bit of reclaimed bog, I'll come down upon 'em with an injunction and I would not value the expense of bringing down a record a pin's pint; and if that went again me, I'd remove it to the courts above, and wilcome: and after that, I'd go into equity; and if the chancellor would not be my friend, I'd take it over to the House of Lords

in London, so I would, as soon as look at 'em; for I'd wear my feet to the knees for justice, so I would.”

KENNY.

"Love, Law, and Physic," a farce by James Kenny, is celebrated. Mr. Daniel, in his introduction to the modern acting edition, says of the character of Flexible, the barrister, which was written for Matthews, "We were present on the second night of his performance, and had the good luck to see his imitation of the late Lord Ellenborough, in his mock charge to the jury, which was one of the finest things the actor ever did; for not only were the voice, manner, pronunciation, and roll of his lordship hit off with perfect exactness, but his very physiognomy was exhibited with astonishing truth. We never beheld an audience more completely taken by surprise. For some special reason, Matthews discontinued it after the second night." While it is hardly worth while to analyze the play, the passage above spoken of may be of interest. It is as follows: "Now, gentlemen, there cannot remain a doubt on your minds that the plaintiff's misfortune was aggravated, even as it originated by an unhappy manual rencounter with the dear companion of his destiny, in which the acute extremities of her delicate fingers unfortunately dislodged the sovereign specific, while in the very act of performing its never-failing duty of restoration. Hence, gentlemen, it was not to the application of the remedy, but its removal; not to his medical friend's want of skill, but his spouse's want of temper; not to his Infallible Balsam, but to her cream of tartar, gentlemen, — that the plaintiff owes the injury for which he comes into court, and calls upon you for heavy damages."