"You

Mr. William Carmichael, advocate, who was remarkably humpbacked, and greatly loved a little mischief, stretched out his legs as the usher passed, which made that functionary come down with great noise. The Lord President flew into a great passion, calling out, drunken beast, this is insufferable." The usher, gathering himself up with dignity, addressed his lordship slily: "An't please your lordship, I am not drunk; but the truth is, as I was bringing in the candles, I fell over Mr. William Carmichael's back." This sally put the whole Court in good humour.

ANOTHER USHER OF THE COURT.

O'Connell told a story of an usher in an Irish court one day being anxious to thin the court, and who called. out: "All ye blackguards that isn't lawyers, quit the coort!"

OLD GRIEVANCE OF CHANCERY DELAYS.

"The Chancery," says a contemporary pamphlet in the time of the Commonwealth, "is a great grievance, one of the greatest in the nation. It is confidently affirmed by knowing gentlemen of worth, that there are depending in that court 23,000 causes; that some of them have been depending five, some ten, some twenty, some thirty years and more; there have been spent in causes many hundreds, nay thousands of pounds, to the undoing of many families; what is ordered one day is contradicted the next, so as in some causes there have been 500 orders."

ONE ORIGIN OF CHANCERY DELAYS.

Lord Keeper Bridgman had been a celebrated lawyer, and sat with high esteem in the place of Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. The removing him from thence to the Chancery did not at all contribute any increase to his fame, but rather the contrary, for he was timorous to an impotence, and that not mended by his great age. He laboured very much to please everybody, and that is a temper of ill consequence in a judge. It was

observed of him, that if a case admitted of divers doubts, which the lawyers call points, he would never give all on one side, but either party should have somewhat to go away with. And in his time the Court of Chancery ran out of order into delays and endless motions in causes, so that it was like a field overgrown with briars. And what was the worst of all, his family were very ill qualified for that place; the lady being a most violent intrigueress in business, and his sons kept no good decorum whilst they practised under him; and he had not a vigour of mind and strength to coerce the cause of so much disorder in his family.-North's Life of Lord Keeper, 88.

ELDON'S CHANCERY DOUBTS, AND KEEPING THE KING'S

CONSCIENCE.

Lord Brougham said of Eldon: "He who would adjourn a private estate bill for weeks unable to make up his mind on one of its clauses, or would take a month to decide on what terms some amendment should be allowed in a suit, could without one moment's hesitation resolve to give the king's consent to the making of laws, when His Majesty was in such a state of mental disease that the keeper of his person could not be suffered to quit the royal closet for an instant, while his patient was with the keeper of his conscience performing the highest function of sovereignty."

DEALING WITH THE SUITOR'S MONEY IN CHANCERY.

To check abuses in time to come, Lord King, when Chancellor, with the concurrence of the Master of the Rolls, remodelled Lord Macclesfield's order, forbidding Masters in Chancery any longer to make use of suitors' money for their own advantage, and commanding them forthwith to pay all sums received by them into the Bank of England. This for the future secured the principal of the money, but would not have done justice to the suitors, whose fortunes might be locked up many years in the course of administration, or pending a complicated litigation. A plan was therefore devised whereby

interest should be allowed to them in the meantime, the money being vested in public securities in the name of a new officer, acting under the control of the Lord Chancellor, to be called the Accountant-General. This was carried into effect by two Acts of Parliament, 12 Geo. I. cc. 32, 33, the one entitled, "An Act for better securing the Monies and Effects of the Suitors of the Court of Chancery;" and the other, "An Act for the Relief of the High Court of Chancery." "Happy had it been," says Oldmixon, "if the Acts had farther relieved the suitors in that court, by regulating the litigious, tedious, and expensive suits, and the enormous extortions of hungry solicitors, and the vexatious and chargeable attendances upon Masters, which render even a Court of Equity in too many instances equally ruinous and terrible." But the difficulties in the way of further improvement were probably then insurmountable.—4 Camp. Chanc., 639.

CHAPTER IV.

ABOUT ADVOCATES, PLEADERS, CONVEYANCERS, AND ATTORNEYS.

THE MORALITY OF ADVOCACY.

"I asked Dr. Johnson," says Boswell, "whether, as a moralist, he did not think that the practice of the law, in some degree, hurt the nice feeling of honesty." Johnson. "Why, no, sir, if you act properly. You are not to deceive your clients with false representations of your opinion you are not to tell lies to a judge." Boswell. "But what do you think of supporting a cause you know to be bad? Johnson. "Sir, you do not know it to be good or bad till the judge determines it. I have said that you are to state facts clearly; so that your thinking, or what you call knowing, a cause to be bad, must be from reasoning, must be from your supposing your arguments to be weak and inconclusive. But, sir, that is not enough. An argument which does not convince yourself, may convince the judge to whom you urge it; and if it does convince him, why, then, sir, you are wrong, and he is right. It is his business to judge and you are not to be confident in your own opinion that a cause is bad, but to say all you can for your client, and then hear the judge's opinion." Boswell. "But, sir, does not affecting a warmth when you have no warmth, and appearing to be clearly of one opinion, when you are, in reality, of another opinion,— does not such dissimulation impair one's honesty? Is there not some danger that a lawyer may put on the same mask in common life, in the intercourse with his friends?" Johnson. "Why, no, sir. Everybody knows

you are paid for affecting warmth for your client; and it is, therefore, properly no dissimulation; the moment you come from the bar you resume your usual behaviour. Sir, a man will no more carry the artifice of the bar into the common intercourse of society, than a man who is paid for tumbling upon his hands will continue to tumble upon his hands when he should walk upon his feet."

A CLIENT ENTITLED TO HAVE HIS VIEWS PUT IN THE BEST WAY.

"Sir," said Dr. Johnson to Sir William Forbes, " lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly; the justice, or injustice, of the cause is to be decided by the judge. Consider, sir, what is the purpose of courts of justice-it is that every man may have his cause fairly tried by men appointed to try causes. A lawyer is not to tell what he knows to be a lie-he is not to produce what he knows to be a false deed; but he is not to usurp the province of the jury and of the judge, and determine what shall be the effect of evidence, what shall be the result of legal argument. If, by a superiority of attention, of knowledge, of skill, and a better method of communication, a lawyer hath the advantage of his adversary, it is an advantage to which he is entitled. There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that that advantage should be by talents than by chance."-Boswell's Johnson.

THE FUNCTION OF THE BAR.

D'Aguesseau, the celebrated French advocate, said of the bar: "It is an order as ancient as the magistracy, as noble as virtue, as necessary as justice; it is distinguished by a character which is peculiar to itself, and it alone always maintains the happy and peaceful possession of independence. The advocate is free without being useless to his country; he devotes himself to the public without being a slave to it."