[xxvi] NOTE O. 



NOTE O. 



Although the lawyer in Utopia resisted improvement, yet 

 even in these early times we find him opposed by the learned 

 Spelraan ; by Sir Edward Coke, Chief Justice; and by Sir 

 Thomas More, Lord Bacon, and Lord Clarendon, Chancellors 

 of England; and in after-times many of the most valuable im 

 provements of this science are to be ascribed to the knowledge 

 and disinterested exertions of the bar and of the bench ; if there 

 are some who are allured only by the promising and pleasing 

 thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions and flowing feesj 

 whose horizon is bounded ; whose thoughts are limited to the 

 improvement of their fortunes or the gratification of their ambi 

 tion ; the great body of this enlightened and liberal profession, 

 grounding their purposes on the heavenly contemplation of jus 

 tice and equity, are not more ready to resist alteration than to 

 encourage improvement. If there are some, who, in pursuit 

 of an object which they imagine to be &quot; of the Lord from hea 

 ven,&quot; are not very scrupulous as to the road over which they 

 must pass to attain it; the profession abounds with men who 

 know the majesty of honest dealing ; whose plans are not sub 

 servient to considerations of reward, estate or title, although 

 they may follow in the train of their duty; who, notwithstand 

 ing the injury to their worldly pursuits from the salutary preju 

 dices against all attempts to correct errors, and more espe 

 cially such errors as are sanctioned by the long practice of a 

 liberal profession ; and notwithstanding the advantages which 

 will be taken of such prejudices by ignorance or artifice, will say 

 with Sir Samuel Romilly, &quot; It is a common and may be a conve 

 nient mode of proceeding, to prevent the progress of improvement, 

 by endeavouring to excite the odium with which all attempts to 

 reform are attended. Upon such expedients it is scarcely ne 

 cessary for me to say, that I have calculated. If I had con 

 sulted only my own immediate interests, my time might have 

 been more profitably employed in the profession in which I am 

 engaged. If I had listened to the dictates of prudence, if I had 

 been alarmed by such prejudices, I could easily have disco- 



