476 Welsh Jurisprudence. [Noy, 
the circuits of the Court of Great Session is so great, that, in the Equity 
Court, the same draftsman is sometimes obliged to prepare both bill and 
answer, “to the great satisfaction,” doubtless, as his lordship observes, 
«of all parties concerned.” The politeness of lawyers is, however, a 
thing not to be taken for granted on such slight authority as our own ; 
and we must, therefore, quote the authority of Lord Cawdor, that the 
inconvenience of all alternate deficiencies of equity and common law 
counsel is, as far as in them lies, remedied by the great good manners 
of the barristers, who, “in the most obliging manner, are, in general, 
ready to practice in law or equity at a moment’s notice.” 
Assuredly, the lack of counsel is not met by any corresponding defi- 
ciency of attornies. A statute of Henry VI., setting forth, that not long 
before that time there had not been more than six or eight attornies in 
Norfolk and Suffolk, “ que tempore (it remarks) magna tranquillitas 
regnabat,” but that the number had then increased to twenty-four, to the 
great vexation and prejudice of these counties, enacted, that for the 
future there should be only six attornies in Norfolk, six in Suffolk, and 
two in the city of Norwich. This “ great vexation and prejudice,” 
sustained by Norfolk and Suffolk, could scarcely be equal to that occa- 
sioned to all the counties of Wales, from the overwhelming excess of its 
attornies—an excess so great, that Lord Cawdor estimates the average 
of business in one of the circuits not to exceed one cause to every pair of 
attornies. Westley, however, used to say, “that the devil never found 
aman idle but he gave him a job,” and, accordingly, as the dearth of 
business in the Court of Great Session leaves plenty of leisure on hand— 
and as the job is pleasanter than starving, the devil finds employment 
for the Welsh attornies, in raking up all sorts of petty disputes, and in 
driving the poor Welshmen about like cattle into all the petty provincial 
courts in the principality.. The following morceau will convey some 
faint idea of the manner in which these precious labourers execute the 
work intrusted to them. Lord Cawdor states it to have been addressed 
to a labouring man, to recover payment for the mending of a pair of 
shoes, and to be copied from the original:—. ~ 
« Sir, 
. Having been directed by A. B. to apply to you for £0. 1s. 0d. due to him, 
} have to request that you will pay me that sum, together with my charge of 
five shillings, on or before Saturday next, as I shal] otherwise be obliged to 
commence an action against you for the recovery thereof without further 
notice. 
“Fam 
** Your obedient servant, 
; “Cn 
_ In a proclamation of the Emperor of China, called forth a few years. 
back, by the troublesome increase of appeals from the provinces, His 
Mightiness enjoins “strict search to be made to discover all law-suit 
exciting blackguards, who fatten on feuds themselves have created, and 
when found to punish them severely.” Fortunate is it for the Welsh 
attornies that the Emperor of China does not get among them with his 
bastinado. With the great learning in the art of suit-making, but, 
little other education would seem to fall to their lot, and, somehow or 
other, they have ever borne a large share of that general obloquy which 
seems to attach upon the whole administration of justice in Wales. At 
a meeting of the county of Pembroke, in the year 1818, for the purpose 
