He keeps his Commons with bailiffs, knights of the pad and the post, and other illustrious personages of equal dignity. He has most carefully gleaned up all the little quirks and artifices in the law, which being too few for his purpose, he has augmented the number with some of his own invention. The fair practice he ever held an uncertain revenue, and honesty a bar to wealth. A weak conscience has disincumbered him of integrity, and a dislike to poverty freed him from every grain of morality. Right and wrong claim no distinction, but as they severally serve his interest. Justice and injustice bear the same convenient equality. It would be matter of wonder should a man, so happily equipped for advancement, miss success. We now find him armed, cap-à-pe, with writs of error, reverse of judgments, sham pleas and demurrers, and Nature’s great design fully answered in his creation. She bestowed knavery with a lavish hand; the addition of solicitor and scrivenor has stamped him pettyfogger in every limb. His penetration is superior to most mens; the first fee enables him to pronounce the cause just, the second amounts to inspiration, and a third shall decree his client the kingdom of Mexico, if he wants it. Find but money, and he will find title. Let him finger a purse, and he will out-run the lawyer in the fable, who ate the oyster and left his client the shell; our pettyfogger will swallow the one and pocket the other. He is the Hyæna [39] of the law, at whose hideous howl the other curs are dumb. His appetite for villany is most voracious, and in time we may hope to see him, like Aaron’s serpent, devouring every poisonous reptile of his own species. His conscience never takes a general view of his actions, but occasionally peeps when he handles the New Testament. In that moment his whole frame shakes from its center, and his soul seems agitated, as if pregnant with the murder of the twelve apostles. He is a remarkable instance of God’s love for the creation; to warn mankind against the wiles of his tongue, Infinite Goodness has set a token of deception in his countenance. In his face we have a perfect index to his heart, each feature is a hieroglyphic expressive of horrid crimes beyond the reach of language. Perjury has so infected his breath, that he omits grace at his meals to avoid tainting the meat. He is a Judas in every thing but remorse; his insatiable avarice secures him from repentance, and he esteems not gold the less as being the price of Blood. He seems to have the gift of divinity, so far as to prophesy his own end; and therefore keeps a monitor [40] in the house to remind him Hanging is not repealed. Quirks, subterfuges, and evasions having kindly lugged him through his filthy life, as a mark of his gratitude he will remember them in his death; so that when the last trumpet sounds to judgment, like Quevedo’s lawyer, he will DEMUR, under pretence that the proceedings were wrong from his creation, he having a soul not made for a human body.
FINIS.
FOOTNOTES.
[7] Wretches that swear to affidavits upon all occasions, without knowing the contents, or the person they are exhibited against.
[31] Sheriffs officers, MERELY from their being SUCH, are excepted in the formation of all neighbourly communities.
[39] Aristotle and Elian relate, that a dog loses the faculty of barking when he opens; that he imitates the speech of a human being for the purpose of gaining admittance into their houses to devour them.
[40] The lady who occasionally officiates as wife, bawd, priestess, or any thing most convenient, often serenades him with a rehearsal of his elegy, insisting on’t he must be hanged.