I came across, the other day, an account of what a naturalist found in a square of backyard nearly uncultivated. Why, such a place as this old priory garden would give him pleasure and profit for months, nay, years, for not a tenth part of all the natural lovelinesses has been exhausted yet. Some other time, perhaps, I shall tell something more of what I find here as the years glide onward.
A POSSIBLE LEGAL REFORM.
Counsel and solicitors have never been so friendly as brother professionals should be, and never will be until ‘amalgamation’ is an accomplished fact. They have many causes of difference—some real, many fancied. In all of them, jealousy is a great factor; for, whatever may be thought to the contrary, each branch of the legal profession is jealous of the privileges of the other. The barrister wants personal relations with his client, which would mean very great loss to the solicitor; and the solicitor wants to be allowed a right of audience before the Supreme Court, which would certainly rob the barrister of half his fees. Hence, there is a straining between the two limbs of the law, which causes many hard things to be said of both.
One of the most real grievances of solicitors is in the matter of fees. Two solicitors brief counsel to appear in two cases. Both cases come on for hearing at the same time in different courts. Obviously, the chosen advocate cannot attend to both, and so one is left to the tender mercies of a half-fledged junior, whose well-meant efforts often result in the loss of his client’s case. That such should be the fact is inevitable, so long as the public will persist in preferring the possible services and slight attention of an ‘eminent’ counsel, obtained at a fancy price, to the certain attention and careful study bestowed upon his case by a less eminent, but often equally able, counsel at a fair price. But the real ground of complaint is that when a case is thus murdered through its conductor’s inability to attend to it, that conductor still retains his fee. He has never, in fact, the smallest idea of disgorging a fee, even when paid on a brief upon which he has never appeared. Why should he? It was not his fault that he could not do the work he was retained for; he has given valuable time to getting up the case (though he certainly need not have done so, as it turned out); and—strongest argument of all—he does not lose custom by thus publicly fattening on the unearned increment. So he has continued to ‘unearn’ it; and the solicitor—whose interests are of course his client’s—has continued to writhe under the open injustice thus sanctioned by the etiquette of that most honourable of professions, the Bar of England.
But at last a ray of hope has found its way into the long-suffering solicitor’s breast. The chink through which the welcome ray has come has been pierced by a certain Mr Norton, a solicitor. It happened in this wise: Mr Norton briefed and feed ‘an eminent leading counsel’ in a certain case; but the retained one failed to appear upon the trial. Mr Norton felt hurt; but, being a practical man, an idea struck him. He wrote to the eminent one, pointing out that it would not be altogether an iniquitous proceeding if his fees were returned. The eminent one made courteous reply that ‘he would be happy to return the fees if he could find any precedent for doing so.’ This would have ‘stumped’ most solicitors; but Mr Norton rose to the occasion. He at once laid the whole matter before the Attorney-general; and that luminary expressed his ‘views and usage’ to be ‘to return so much of the brief fee as exceeds the amount which would have been proper if the brief had been simply a case for opinion.’ This means the return in such cases of by far the greater portion of the fees; and such return will, if it become a ‘precedent,’ be most acceptable not only to solicitors, but to the public at large. In this particular case, the counsel referred to, having found a precedent, and being unable to eat his own words, at once sent Mr Norton a ‘cheque for the difference;’ and Mr Norton has certainly done well to make the matter public. All barristers now have a sound precedent for doing an act of justice; and it is to be hoped that they, as a body, will not neglect to follow it. So the profession will escape a certain amount of ill repute which has long tarnished, in the eyes at least of envious persons, its very honourable ’scutcheon.
DEAD FLOWERS.
By Alexander Anderson.
Those simple daisies which you view,
Last year, when summer winds did wave,
And clouds were white with sunshine, grew