!'.\PERS OF }fl:;.\UEAU BuoNAPARTE LA)[AR 21 tation ancl that dignity which his assumption and insolence cnclearnurec~ to mentain I would as soon hnve thought that a cat wns entitled to the epithet.- Having given _you the character of )fr. Stiles your ~uitor with all the <:anclure & impartiality of a friend & benevolent nephew I shall coi:iclude my letter with advising you to hnve nothing more to say to l11m ancl endeavor for the future to learn to make proper discriminations between the l:iombastical fustian of a petifoger & that genuine language the result of good understanding and literary accomplishment. Yours &C- 0- L- Having thus gi\'en such incontestihle proof of my irnnse fancy & wit as for it to he impossible for a reasonable creature to entertain any other opinion of me than the exalted one that I ha.ve of myself I shall now proceed in a sublime manner upon the subject that I first pro- posed, which was to give a short account of animal called a lawyer but whose name with a little orthographical correction may be ,erry concistantly converted into lya.r. The institutions of laws for the gov- ernment of society and the administration of justice amongst its mem- bers was a grand effort of human wisdom and was rendered necessary by the natural tendency of man to depart from justice when unre- strained by the fear of legal interposition; But it is an evil attendant upon the improvement of society & judicial refinement that laws must necessarily become more complicate & intricate- Hence that herd of litigious beings denominated Lawyers who pretend to expound & elu- cidate all legal misteries. The usual motto of these judicial wrangles is pro bono publico by which they wish to hold out the idea that they are solely devoted to the interest of their country: whilst in reality their principles of. equity are entirely dependant upon the magnitude of a fee. As t~,: temperature of the atmosphere operates upon the mercury of a theifimeter, thus can a fee work upon the opinions and conduct of that .i'ionsistant animal called Lawyer. Let a. man appl~, who is unable to~ve a fee for legal assistance he will immediately sink to the freezing point And nothing can move or prompt him to lend his efforts without a prospect of ultimate gain But let a rich dispoiler of another rights- a thief or murderer approa.ch him with the vivifying influence of a distended purse his powers are immediately relaxed- he prostitutes himself for the deliverance of villains and exerts his talents (though most commonly feeble) in the perYersion of truth & justice Originally these sons of Law were honoured by the dignifiecl appellation of Counsellors their business being that of giving legal adm'.ce which they could do with inauxtable volubility when cheered hy the hope of obtaining a heavy fee; But in con.sequence of the vocation being d.isgraced by such numbers of pragmatical numb- sculls turning their mind to the study of jurisprudence the nnme is now taken from them and they are better known in these modern days by the term 'f11"0fessional gentlemen which means I ~uppose ~entle- men who have no knowledge of the law but are only professing to have- Notwithstanding the J1atural imbecility of these poor petti- foggers & their total ignorance of the principles of law & justice yet ~any of them by trumpeting their own greatness to the credulous and using habes corpus, certiorari, ca-sa and other like hard terms in company of the illiterate have passed with the Rabble ns pretty learned
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