572 The Court of Chancery. [JUNE, 



aristocracy and the church to push forward; and the interests of the 

 crown did not intervene to oppose. Can it be doubted by any rational 

 njind that it was indebted for its failure to sinister interest and can that 

 sinister interest be other than the interest of the lawyers and of the offi- 

 cial retainers of the court ? That a direct pecuniary interest will insure . 

 the opposition of sinecure officers, and of those who are " travaillant 

 fort peu et recevant beaucoup," we think no man out of Bedlam will 

 deny. Indeed, the former, instead of being grateful that they are not 

 made to disgorge under the operation of a national bill "for an account" 

 openly talk of the privilege of exaction as their "freehold." "We have 

 bought our places," say they. " If you take them from us, we must have 

 compensation." That the majority of the profession will fail to be 

 remotely operated on by the presumption, that reformation will reduce 

 its general lucrativeness, would, we think, be a bold proposition to main- 

 tain ; a presumption, though by-the-by we take leave to observe, 

 founded in the purest ignorance first, because a diminution of the cost 

 of the luxury of justice would increase its sale; and, secondly, because its 

 present price tempts into the market so many dealers, that competition, 

 necessarily, reduces to the minimum of profitable return the individual 

 traffic of each. But there are other influences upon the mind than those 

 of either direct or remote pecuniary interest. Schooled in a technical 

 science, the lawyers fall very naturally into the habit of making its rules 

 the horizon of their moral vision; and they seldom seem to realize the 

 idea either of the mischiefs caused by the narrowness, or the inadequacy 

 of their own system. Their reasoning will generally be found rather of 

 a technical than of an enlarged character. In the bill for Englishing 

 the proceedings of the courts, Mr. Parkes relates of Whitelock (p. 137), 

 that, " after elaborately stating the arguments pro and con, he seems to 

 give a casting vote in favour of the bill, because ( Moses read all the 

 laws openly before the people in their mother-tongue ;' " and sorry are 

 we to declare, that many of the arguments by which some of the details 

 of Mr. Brougham's proposition was lately opposed by one of the great law 

 officers of the crown, evinced as much of the lawyer, and as little of the 

 jurist. Clarendon, speaking of the lawyers of his day, says " I do not 

 at all wonder, that, in the great herd of the common lawyers, many prag- 

 matical spirits, whose thoughts and observations have been contracted to the 

 narrow limits of the few books of that profession, or within the narrower 

 circle of bar oratory, should go along with the stream in the womanish 

 art of inveighing against persons, when they should be reforming of 

 things," (p. 109). It would seem, in the opinion of one of the pro- 

 foundest observers of mankind, that, after the lapse of a couple of cen- 

 turies, they have sustained little alteration ; for, in his celebrated speech 

 on American taxation, Burke, after lauding Mr. Grenville as a man of 

 business, is driven to account for the narrowness of his policy by his 

 earlier professional studies : " He was bred to a profession he was 

 bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of 

 human sciences ; a science which does more to quicken and invigorate 

 the understanding, than all the other kinds of learning put together ; 

 but it is not apt, except in persons' very happily born, to open and libera- 

 lize the mind exactly in the same proportion." Be this as it may, it is 

 too notorious to be denied, that in its professors the law finds its only 

 but its warm admirers. The reverential awe with which Mr. Justice 

 Blackstone approaches even the most glaring imperfections of the sys- 

 tem, scarcely equals the veneration with which the Bramin opens the 



