An inquiry into the permanent causes of the decline and fall of powerful and wealthy nations

by William Playfair

proverbs are, that what is every body's business is nobody's,) the lawyers must encroach on the public, and they have done so to a most alarming degree.

In this case, it is not, as in others, where the great cut out work for and employ the small. No. The great generally (indeed almost always) begin with the advice and by the means of an attorney, who is only supposed to understand law-practice. The proceeding does not originate with the council, who could form some judgment of the justice of the case, so that a mean petty-fogging attorney may, for a trifle, which he puts into his own pocket, ruin two ignorant and honest men; he may set the ablest council to work, and occupy, for a time, the courts of justice, to the general interruption of law, and injury of the public.

This is, perhaps, one of the greatest and most crying evils in the land, and calls out the most loudly for redress, as the effects are very universal. In a commercial country, so many interests clash, and there are such a variety of circumstances, that the vast swarms of attorneys, who crowd the kingdom, find no difficulty in misleading one of the parties, and that is the cause of most law-suits.

As commercial wealth increases the evil augments, not in simple proportion, but in a far more rapid progression; first, in proportion to the wealth and gain to be obtained, and, secondly, according to the opportunities which augment with the business done.

In addition to the real dead expense, the loss of time, the attention, and the misfortune and misery occasioned by the law, are terrible evils; and, if ever the moment comes, that a general dissatisfaction prevails, it will be the law that will precipitate the evil.

The mildness of the civil laws in France, and the restraints under which lawyers are held, served greatly to soften the rigours of the revolution for the first two years. Had they possessed the power and the means they do in England, the revolution must have become much more terrible than it was at the first outset.

The lawyers owe all their power to the nature of the government. An arbitrary monarch will have no oppressor but himself, but here the [end of page #121] different interests are supposed to be poised; and when they are, all goes right, but, when they happen not to be so, the most active interest carries the day.

Though the law is the greatest of those bodies that is of a different interest from the public at large, yet there are some others deserving notice, and requiring reformation. It is the interest of all those who are connected with government to do away abuses that tend to endanger its security, or diminish its resources.

As the public revenue is all derived from those who labour, and as it can come from no other persons, if the prosperity and happiness of the subject were a mere matter of indifference, which it cannot be supposed to be; still it would be an object for government to preserve his resources undiminished. It was our lot, in another chapter, to mention the enormous increase of the poor's rate, which was in part attributed to the general increase of wealth; mal-administration is, however, another cause, and, the public is the more to be pitied, that the parish-officers defend their conduct against their constituents at the expense of their constituents.

In an inquiry after truth, it should be spoken without fear of offending; and, in this case, though the feelings of Englishmen may, perhaps, be hurt, and their pride wounded, it must be allowed, that if it were not for the mock-democratical form of administrating =sic= the funds for the maintenance of the poor, they would never suffer the extortion, and the bare-faced iniquities that are committed. {99} The ship-money, the poll-tax, the taxes on the Americans, and others, that have caused so much bloodshed and strife, never amounted to one-tenth, if all added together, of what the English public pays to be applied to maintain the poor, and administered by rude illiterate men, who render scarcely any account, and certainly, in general, evade all regular control. Those administrators, though chosen by the people, always, while in office, imbibe l'esprit du corps, and make a common cause.