"Law," was the laconic answer.
"Well, you can have plenty of that here," said Mr. Mac Chizzle. "But—I think you are the gentleman with whom I had the pleasure of passing a pleasant evening at the Servants' Arms, a day or two ago."
"The indentical same," returned Whittingham, flinging his hat upon the floor and himself into a chair.
"Take time to breathe, sir," said the lawyer. "If you're come for advice you couldn't have selected a better shop; but I must tell you before-hand that mine is quite a ready money business."
"Very good, sir. I'll tell you my story first and foremost; and you can then explain the most legible means of preceeding. I want law and justice."
"Law you can have in welcome; but whether you will obtain justice is another consideration."
"I'm bewildered in a labyrinth of mazes, sir," said the butler. "I always opiniated that law and justice was the same thing."
"Quite the reverse, I can assure you. Law is a human invention: justice is a divine inspiration. What is law to-day, is not law to-morrow; and yet everything is still denominated justice. A creditor asks for justice when he appeals to a tribunal against his debtor; and how is that justice awarded? Why—if a man can't pay five pounds, the law immediately makes his debt ten pounds; and if he can't live out of doors, the law immediately shuts him up in prison by way of helping him out of his difficulties. That is law, sir; but it is not justice."
"Right, sir—very right."
"Law, you see, sir," continued Mac Chizzle, who was particularly fond of hearing himself talk,—"law is omnipotent, and beats justice to such an extreme, that justice would be justified in bringing an action of assault and battery against law. Law even makes religion, sir; and gives the attributes of the Deity; for no one dares assert that God possesses a quality or a characteristic, unless in conformity with the law. And as these laws are always changing, so of course does the nature of the deity, as established by the law, vary too; so that men may be said to go to heaven or to another place by the turnpike-roads laid down by the law."