The fact was that his salary came, not directly, but indirectly from Lady Lechester, and he was favoured accordingly. If he had known this he would have been still more dissatisfied.
The office in which he was placed was a kind of library or retiring apartment, opening by double doors into Mr Broughton’s private room; and he was often called upon to bear witness to certain transactions of a strictly private nature, and in which the solicitor told him he relied upon his honour as a gentleman, to preserve secrecy.
Broughton really meant him well, and did his best now and then to start him on in the acquisition of a knowledge of the law. Books were put into his hands, and he was told what parts of them to study, and had to prepare extracts from them occasionally. Aymer did his best, conscientiously, but he hated it—he hated it most thoroughly. It was not altogether that the reading in these books was dry and uninteresting to the last degree. Flat, tame, spiritless, meaningless,—a mere collection of decisions, interpretations, precedents—such they appeared at first. Aymer had talent and insight sufficient to speedily observe that this forbidding aspect was not the true one.
All these precedents, rules, decisions—these ten thousand subtle distinctions—were much like the laws or rules of a game at chess. They decided in what way a pawn should be moved or a bishop replaced. The science of law seemed to him like a momentous game at chess, only the pieces were living human creatures.
These subtle distinctions and technical divisions, formalities though they appeared, had a meaning, and a deep one. Following his employer, Mr Broughton, into the petty law courts at Barnham, he saw how the right and the wrong, the sorrow or the joy of human beings depended almost upon the quibble of a word, the incident of a slip of the pen. It was a game—a game requiring long study, an iron memory, quick observation, and quicker decision; and he hated it—hated it because the right appeared to be of no consequence. Truth, and what he had always thought was meant by justice, were left entirely out of sight.
It was not the man who had the right upon his side who won. If that was the case, what use would there be for lawyers? Too often it was the man who had the law upon his side, and the law only. He actually heard magistrates, and even judges, expressing their regret that the law compelled them to give decisions contrary to the true justice of the cause before them.
By degrees he became aware of the extraordinary fact, that with all the cumbrous system of law phrases—a system that requires a special dictionary—there was not even a word to express what he understood as justice; not even a word to express it!
Justice meant a decision according to the law, and not according to the right or wrong of the particular case proceeding; equity meant a decision based upon a complex, antiquated, unreasonable jumble of obsolete customs. The sense of the word “equity”—as it is used in the sublime prophecy, “With equity shall he judge the world”—was entirely lost.
In the brief time that he had sat beside Mr Broughton in these Courts, Aymer conceived an intense loathing for the whole system. After all, what was the law, upon which so much was based, which over-rode equity, justice, truth, and even conscience? What was this great fetish to which every one bowed the knee—from the distinguished and learned judge downwards, the judge who, in point of fact, admitted and regretted that he decided against his conscience? It was principally precedent. Because a man had once been hung for a murder committed in a certain manner, men must always be hung for murder. Because a judge had once given a verdict which, under the circumstances, was as near the right as he dared to go (and our judges do this), then every one who came after must be dealt with by this immovable standard.
The very passage of time itself—the changes introduced into society, custom, and modes of thought in the course of the years—was in itself a strong and all-sufficient argument against this fetish precedent.