Is a retailer of justice that uses false lights, false weights, and
false measures. He measures right and wrong by his retaining fee, and,
like a French duellist, engages on that side that first bespeaks him,
though it be against his own brother; not because it is right, but
merely upon a punctilio of profit, which is better than honour to him,
because riches will buy nobility, and nobility nothing, as having no
intrinsic value. He sells his opinion, and engages to maintain the title
against all that claim under him, but no further. He puts it off upon
his word, which he believes himself not bound to make good, because when
he has parted with his right to it, it is no longer his. He keeps no
justice for his own use, as being a commodity of his own growth, which
he never buys, but only sells to others; and as no man goes worse shod
than the shoemaker, so no man is more out of justice than he that gets
his living by it. He draws bills as children do lots at a lottery, and
is paid as much for blanks as prizes. He undoes a man with the same
privilege as a doctor kills him, and is paid as well for it as if he
preserved him, in which he is very impartial, but in nothing else. He
believes it no fault in himself to err in judgment, because that part of
the law belongs to the judge and not to him. His best opinions and his
worst are all of a price, like good wine and bad in a tavern, in which
he does not deal so fairly as those who, if they know what you are
willing to bestow, can tell how to fit you accordingly. When his law
lies upon his hands he will afford a good pennyworth, and rather
pettifog and turn common barreter than be out of employment. His opinion
is one thing while it is his own and another when it is paid for; for,
the property being altered, the case alters also. When his counsel is
not for his client's turn he will never take it back again, though it be
never the worse, nor allow him anything for it, yet will sell the same
over and over again to as many as come to him for it. His pride
increases with his practice, and the fuller of business he is, like a
sack, the bigger he looks. He crowds to the Bar like a pig through a
hedge, and his gown is fortified with flankers about the shoulders to
guard his ears from being galled with elbows. He draws his bills more
extravagant and unconscionable than a tailor; for if you cut off
two-thirds in the beginning, middle, or end, that which is left will be
more reasonable and nearer to sense than the whole, and yet he is paid
for all; for when he draws up a business, like a captain that makes
false musters, he produces as many loose and idle words as he can
possibly come by until he has received for them, and then turns them off
and retains only those that are to the purpose. This he calls drawing of
breviates. All that appears of his studies is, in short, time converted
into waste-paper, tailor's measures, and heads for children's drums. He
appears very violent against the other side, and rails to please his
client as they do children, "Give me a blow and I'll strike him, ah,
naughty!" &c. This makes him seem very zealous for the good of his
client, and though the cause go against him he loses no credit by it,
especially if he fall foul on the counsel of the other side, which goes
for no more among them than it does with those virtuous persons that
quarrel and fight in the streets to pick the pockets of those that look
on. He hangs men's estates and fortunes on the slightest curiosities and
feeblest niceties imaginable, and undoes them like the story of breaking
a horse's back with a feather or sinking a ship with a single drop of
water, as if right and wrong were only notional and had no relation at
all to practice (which always requires more solid foundations), or
reason and truth did wholly consist in the right spelling of letters,
whenas the subtler things are the nearer they are to nothing, so the
subtler words and notions are the nearer they are to nonsense. He
overruns Latin and French with greater barbarism than the Goths did
Italy and France, and makes as mad a confusion of language by mixing
both with English. Nor does he use English much better, for he clogs it
so with words that the sense becomes as thick as puddle, and is utterly
lost to those that have not the trick of skipping over where it is
impertinent. He has but one termination for all Latin words, and that's
a dash. He is very just to the first syllables of words, but always
bobtails the last, in which the sense most of all consists, like a cheat
that does a man all right at the first that he may put a trick upon him
in the end. He is an apprentice to the law without a master, is his own
pupil, and has no tutor but himself, that is a fool. He will screw and
wrest law as unmercifully as a tumbler does his body to lick up money
with his tongue. He is a Swiss that professes mercenary arms, will fight
for him that gives him best pay, and, like an Italian bravo, will fall
foul on any man's reputation that he receives a retaining fee against.
If he could but maintain his opinions as well as they do him, he were a
very just and righteous man; but when he has made his most of it, he
leaves it, like his client, to shift for itself. He fetches money out of
his throat like a juggler; and as the rabble in the country value
gentlemen by their housekeeping and their eating, so is he supposed to
have so much law as he has kept commons, and the abler to deal with
clients by how much the more he has devoured of Inns-of-Court mutton;
and it matters not whether he keep his study so he has but kept commons.
He never ends a suit, but prunes it that it may grow the faster and
yield a greater increase of strife. The wisdom of the law is to admit of
all the petty, mean, real injustices in the world, to avoid imaginary
possible great ones that may perhaps fall out. His client finds the
Scripture fulfilled in him, that it is better to part with a coat too
than go to law for a cloak; for, as the best laws are made of the worst
manners, even so are the best lawyers of the worst men. He hums about
Westminster Hall, and returns home with his pockets like a bee with his
thighs laden; and that which Horace says of an ant, _Ore trahit
quodcunque potest, atque addit acervo_, is true of him, for he gathers
all his heap with the labour of his mouth rather than his brain and
hands. He values himself, as a carman does his horse, by the money he
gets, and looks down upon all that gain less as scoundrels. The law is
like that double-formed, ill-begotten monster that was kept in an
intricate labyrinth and fed with men's flesh, for it devours all that
come within the mazes of it and have not a clue to find the way out
again. He has as little kindness for the Statute Law as Catholics have
for the Scripture, but adores the Common Law as they do tradition, and
both for the very same reason; for the Statute Law being certain,
written and designed to reform and prevent corruptions and abuses in the
affairs of the world (as the Scriptures are in matters of religion), he
finds it many times a great obstruction to the advantage and profit of
his practice; whereas the Common Law, being unwritten, or written in an
unknown language which very few understand but himself, is the more
pliable and easy to serve all his purposes, being utterly exposed to
what interpretation and construction his interest and occasions shall at
any time incline him to give it; and differs only from arbitrary power
in this, that the one gives no account of itself at all, and the other
such a one as is perhaps worse than none, that is implicit and not to be
understood, or subject to what constructions he pleases to put
upon it:--
Great critics in a _noverint universi_
Know all men by these presents how to curse ye;
Pedants of said and foresaid, and both Frenches,
Pedlars, and pokie, may those rev'rend benches
Y' aspire to be the stocks, and may ye be
No more call'd to the Bar, but pillory;
Thither in triumph may ye backward ride
To have your ears most justly crucified,
And cut so close until there be not leather
Enough to stick a pen in left of either;
Then will your consciences, your ears, and wit
Be like indentures tripartite cut fit.
May your horns multiply and grow as great
As that which does blow grace before your meat;
May varlets be your barbers now, and do
The same to you they have been done unto;
That's law and gospel too; may it prove true,
Then they shall do pump-justice upon you;
And when y' are shaved and powder'd you shall fall,
Thrown o'er the Bar, as they did o'er the wall,
Never to rise again, unless it be
To hold your hands up for your roguery;
And when you do so may they be no less
Sear'd by the hangman than your consciences.
May your gowns swarm until you can determine
The strife no more between yourselves and vermin
Than you have done between your clients' purses;
Now kneel and take the last and worst of curses--
May you be honest when it is too late;
That is, undone the only way you hate.