appearance of trifling: the apology consists in the extensively prevailing propensity to overlook and turn aside from a fact so entitled to notice. It is the people's interest that delay, vexation and expense of procedure should be as small as possible :-it is the advocate's that they should be as great as possible: viz. expense in so far as his profit is proportioned to it; factitious vexation and delay, in so far as inseparable from the profit-yielding part of the expense. As to uncertainty in the law, it is the people's interest that each man's security against wrong should be as complete as possible; that all his rights should be known to him; that all acts, which in the case of his doing them will be treated as offences, may be known to him as such, together with their eventual punishment, that he may avoid committing them, and that others may, in as few instances as possible, suffer either from the wrong or from the expensive and vexatious remedy. Hence it is their interest, that as to all these matters the rule of action, in so far as it applies to each man, should at all times be not only discoverable, but actually present to his mind. Such knowledge, which it is every man's interest to possess to the greatest, it is the lawyer's interest that he possess it to the narrowest extent possible. It is every man's interest to keep out of lawyers' hands as much as possible; it is the lawyer's interest to get him in as often, and keep him in as long, as possible: thence that any written expression of the words necessary to keep non-lawyers out of his hand may as long as possible be prevented from coming into

existence, and when in existence as long as possible kept from being present to his mind, and when presented from staying there". It is the lawyer's interest, therefore, that people should continually suffer for the non-observance of laws, which, so far from having received efficient promulgation, have never yet found any authoritative expression in words. This is the perfection of oppression: yet, propose that access to knowledge of the laws be afforded by means of a code, lawyers, one and all, will join in declaring it impossible. To any effect, as occasion occurs, a judge will forge a rule of law: to that same effect, in any determinate form of words, propose to make a law, that same judge will declare it impossible. It is the judge's interest that on every occasion his declared opinion be taken for the standard of right and wrong; that whatever he declares right or wrong be universally received as such, how contrary soever such declaration be to truth and utility, or to his own declaration at other times-hence, that within the whole field of law, men's opinions of right and wrong should be as contradictory, unsettled, and thence as obsequious to him as possible: in particular, that the same conduct

⚫ A considerable proportion of what is termed the Common law of England is in this oral and unwritten state. The cases in which it has been clothed with words, that is, in which it has been framed and pronounced, are to be found in the various collections of reported decisions. These decisions, not having the sanction of a law passed by the legislature, are confirmed or overruled at pleasure by the existing judges; so that, except in matters of the most common and daily occurrence, they afford no rule of action at all.

which to others would occasion shame and punishment, should to him and his occasion honour and reward that on condition of telling a lie, it should be in his power to do what he pleases, the injustice and falsehood being regarded with complacency and reverence; that as often as by falsehood, money or advantage in any other shape can be produced to him, it should be regarded as proper for him to employ reward or punishment, or both, for the procurement of such falsehood. Consistently with men's abstaining from violences, by which the person and property of him and his would be alarmingly endangered, it is his interest that intellectual as well as moral depravation should be as intense and extensive as possible; That transgressions cognizable by him should be as numerous as possible; That injuries and other transgressions committed by him should be reverenced as acts of virtue; That the suffering produced by such injuries should be placed, not to his account, but to the immutable nature of things, or to the wrongdoer, who, but for encouragement from him, would not have become such. His professional and personal interest being thus adverse to that of the public, from a lawyer's declaration that the tendency of a proposed law relative to procedure, &c. is pernicious, the contrary inference may not unreasonably be drawn. From those habits of misrepresenting their own opinion (i. e. of insincerity), which are almost peculiar to this in comparison with other classes, one presumption is, that he does not entertain the opinion thus declared;

-another, that if he does, he has been deceived into it by sinister interest and the authority of co-professional men, in like manner deceivers or deceived: in other words, it is the result of interest-begotten prejudice. In the case of every other body of men, it is generally expected that their conduct and language will be for the most part directed by their own interest, that is, by their own view of it. In the case of the lawyer, the ground of this persuasion, so far from being weaker, is stronger than in any other case. His evidence being thus interested evidence, according to his own rules his declaration of opinion on the subject here pointed out would not be so much as hearable. It is true, were those rules consistently observed, judicature would be useless, and society dissolved: accordingly they are not so observed, but observed or broken pretty much at pleasure; but they are not the less among the number of those rules, the excellence and inviolability of which the lawyer is never tired of trumpeting. But on any point, such as those in question, nothing could be more unreasonable, nothing more inconsistent with what has been said above, than to refuse him a hearing. Ou every such point, his habits and experience afford him facilities not possessed by any one else for finding relevant and specific arguments, when the nature of the case affords any; but the surer he is of being able to find such arguments, if any such are to be found, the stronger the reason for treating his naked declaration of opinion as unworthy of all regard: accompanied by specific arguments, it is useless; desti

tute of them, it amounts to a virtual confession of their non-existence.

So matters stand on the question what ought to be law.

On the question what the law is, so long as the rule of action is kept in the state of common, alias unwritten, alias imaginary law, authority, though next to nothing, is every thing. The question is, what on a given occasion A. (the judge) is likely to think: wait till your fortune has been spent in the inquiry, and you will know; but, forasmuch as it is naturally a man's wish to be able to give a guess what the result will eventually be, before he has spent his fortune, in the view if possible to avoid spending his fortune and getting nothing in return for it, he applies through the medium of B. (an attorney) for an opinion to C. (a counsel), who, considering what D. (a former judge) has, on a subject supposed to be more or less analogous to the one in question, said or been supposed to say, deduces therefore his guess as to what, when the time comes, Judge A., he thinks, will say, and gives it you. A shorter way would be to put the question at once to A.; but, for obvious reasons, this is not permitted.

On many cases, again, as well-grounded a guess might be had of an astrologer for five shillings, as of a counsel for twice or thrice as many guineas, but that the lawyer considers the astrologer as a smuggler, and puts him down.

But Packwood's opinion on the goodness of his own razors would be a safer guide for judging of their good