'Ha, ha, ha! You have no cause to complain: you are a lawyer, and your own interest must teach you that every thing is right. Except indeed that the classes or heads I mentioned, and consequently the blunders, are not numerous enough. But, thank heaven, we have a remedy for that: for our statute-books are daily swelling.'
'Why, yes! Some people say they are pregnant with mischief: of which it is further asserted that they are daily delivered.'
'Ay, certainly; and to the great joy of the parents.'
'Who are they?'
'Enquire for the father at St. Stephen's; and for the mother at Westminster-hall. I assure you they are both enraptured at their own offspring. The old lady sits in state, and daily praises her babes with the most doating loquacity. And she does this with so grave a face that it is impossible to forbear laughing, when you hear her. She is so serious, so solemn, so convinced that every thing she utters is oracular, and so irascible if she does but so much as smell a doubt concerning the beauty and perfection of her brats, that there is no scene in the world which tickles my imagination so irresistibly as to watch her maternal visage during her eulogiums, while the big-wigs are nodding approbation; or the contortions of her physiognomy, when any cross incident happens to impede the torrent of her fondness. With all due respect to her motherly functions, she is a very freakish and laughable old lady.'
'You have a turn for ridicule: but I confess, if I thought your picture were true, I do not believe my sensations would be so pleasant as yours appear to be.'
'And why, in the name of common sense?'
'How can one laugh at the mistakes and miseries of mankind?'
'For a very simple reason: because it is the only way that can render them endurable. None but a fool would cry at what cannot be corrected.'
The colloquy between my companions here took another direction, less interesting to me, and left me to pause and ruminate. This picture, said I, is satirical I own: but surely it is unjust. Blackstone, beyond all doubt, understood the science profoundly; and his account of it is very different indeed.