Alscrip. A client insist! and you, an old practitioner, suffer such a demur to your infallibility!—Ah! in my practice I had the sure means of disappointing such dabblers and divers into their own cases.
Rightly. How, pray?
Alscrip. I read his writings to him myself.—I was the best reader in Chancery-lane for setting the understanding at defiance—Drew breath but once in a quarter of an hour, always in the wrong place, and made a single sentence of six skins of parchment—Shall I give you a specimen?
Rightly. [Smiling.] I have no doubt of your talent.
Alscrip. Then return to Sir Clement, and follow my example.
Rightly. No, Mr. Alscrip, though I acknowledge your skill, I do not subscribe to your doctrine. The English law is the finest system of ethics, as well as government, that ever the world produced, and it cannot be too generally understood.
Alscrip. Law understood! Zounds! would you destroy the profession!
Rightly. No, I would raise it. Had every man of sense the knowledge of the theory, to which he is competent; the practice would revert to the purity of its institution, maintain the rights, and not promote the knavery, of mankind.
Alscrip. [Aside.] Plaguy odd maxims.—Sure he means to try me—[To him.] Brother Rightly, we know the world and are alone—I have locked the door.
[In a half whisper.