THE HUMOURS OF LAW.

"These are the spiders of society;

They weave their petty webs of lies and sneers,
And lie themselves in ambush for the spoil.

The web seems fair and glitters in the sun,

And the poor victim winds him in the toil,

Before he dreams of danger, or of death."-L. E. L.

"Laws are like spiders' webs, that will catch flies, but not wasps and hornets."-ANACHARSIS.

LAW is law-and, as in such, and so forth, and hereby, and aforesaid, provided always, nevertheless, notwithstanding. Law is like a blistering plaster—it is a great irritator and only to be used in cases of great extremity. Law, again, is compared to a country dance; people are led up and down in it till they are thoroughly tired. Law is like a book of surgery; there are a great many terrible cases in it. It is also like physic; they that take the least of it are best off. It is like a scolding wife ; very bad when it follows us. It is like bad weather; people are glad when they get out of it.

Take, again, the following lucid definition of legal science: "Law always expresses itself with true grammatical precision, never confounding moods, tenses, cases, or genders, except, indeed, when a woman happens accidentally to be slain, then the verdict brought in, is manslaughter. The essence of law is altercation, for the law can altercate, fulminate, deprecate, irritate, and go on at any rate. Now the quintessence of the law has, according to its name, five points-the first is the beginning or incipiendum, the second its uncertainty, or

dubitandum, the third delay, or puzzliendum, the fourth replication without endum, and fifth monstrum et horrendum."

"I hope," says the lawyer in Steele's comedy, "to see the day when the indenture shall be the exact measure of the land that passes by it; for it is a discouragement to the gown that every ignorant rogue of an heir should in a word or two understand his father's meaning, and hold ten acres of land by half an acre of parchment. Let others think of logic, rhetoric, and I know not what impertinence, but mind thou tautology. What's the first excellence in a lawyer? tautology. What's the second? tautology. What's the third ? tautology; as an old pleader said of action." +

Another facetious writer fortunately comes to our aid in defining our mysterious subject. "Law," he affirms, "is like fire; since those who meddle with it may chance to burn their fingers. It is like a pocket with a hole in it; and those who risk their money therein are liable to lose it. It is a lancet ; dangerous in the hands of the ignorant, doubtful even in the hands of an adept. Law is like a sieve; you may see through it but you will be considerably reduced before you get through it.

"It is to the litigant what the poulterer is to the goose; it plucks and it draws him; but here the simile ends, for the litigant, unlike the goose, never gets trust, although he may be roasted and dished.

"It is like an ignis fatuus; those who follow the delusive guide too often find themselves inextricably involved in a bog. "It is like an eel-trap; very easy to get into, but very difficult to get out of.

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"It is like a razor; which requires a strong back,' keenness, and an excellent temper.

"N. B.-Many of those who get once shaved seldom risk a second operation.

"It is like a flight of rockets; there is a great expense of powder, the cases are usually well 'got up,' the reports are

* Stevens' Lecture on Head.

Southey's "Common-place Book." The author of the "Tin Trumpet."

excellent, but after all, the sticks (the clients) are sure to come

to the ground."

Ray sets the matter to music in the following stanza :

"Law is like longitude, about,

Never completely yet found out;

Though practised notwithstanding.
'Tis like the fatalist's strange creed,
Which justifies a wicked deed,
While sternly reprimanding !"

If a man would, according to law, give to another an orange, instead of saying, "I give you that orange," which one would think would be what is called in legal phraseology," an absolute conveyance of all right and title therein," the phrase would run thus: "I give you, all and singular, my estate and interest, right, title, and claim, and advantage of and in that orange, with all its rind, skin, juice, pulps, and all right and advantages therein, with full power to bite, cut, suck, or otherwise eat the same orange, or give the same away, with or without all its rind, skin, juice, pulp and pips, anything heretofore or hereinafter, or in any other deed or deeds, instruments, of what nature or kind soever, to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding; and much more to the same effect. Such is the language of lawyers; and it is gravely held by the most learned men among them, that by the omission of any of those words the right to the same orange would not pass to the person for whose use the same was intended.

Lord Brougham once facetiously defined a lawyer thus: “a learned gentleman, who rescues your estate from your enemies, and keeps it himself."

A wag, being left trustee under a will by which the testator left a small freehold property to be sold for charitable purposes, sold it, and discovered the trust to be illegal. As the sum was too small in amount to bear a suit in equity (being not above sixty pounds), he laughed very heartily at the next of kin, pocketed it himself, spent it, and died.

Human laws are designed mainly to protect absolute rights; the laws, or the lawyers, however, often interfere with what

seems absolutely right, till there is nothing absolutely left of the original right-and absolute wrong is of necessity the consequence. Those reputed allies-equity and justice-seem in these boasted days of "progress," not only to have repudiated their avowed relationship, but even to have well-nigh lost all kind of respect for each other. Cato, it is stated, pleaded four hundred cases, and won them all. Charity would lead us to indulge the hope that a sterner virtue existed in his day, at any rate to warrant the adoption of the insignia of the well-balanced scales of the blind goddess. It is with law as with physic-the less we have to do with it the better: still, so long as diseases and discord disturb the social fabric, pacification and pills seem to be indispensable, and we must, therefore, content ourselves with whatever the collective wisdom of ancient and modern sages has prescribed as antidotes. Let us indulge the hope that the hitherto protracted process of law, will, ere long, be divested of its wilderness waste of words, and reduced down to the simple elements of verity and common sense-something analogous to the homoopathic system of medicine. Justinian has reduced the principles of law to three: first, that we should live honestly; secondly, that we should hurt nobody; and thirdly, that we should give to every one his due. These principles have, however, long ago become obsolete in ordinary legal practice. Natural law and artificial possess, it would seem, little in common; the former indicates man's true happiness and peace-the latter too often proves the bane of both. It is said that no human laws are of any validity if they are contrary to those of nature; but who will, for instance, venture to deny the

*The difficulty of ascertaining the precise meaning of law, led to the establishment of a distinct branch of jurisprudence, called equity. Lord Chancellor Eldon, it will be remembered, presided something like half a century over the highest institution of this kind in England; so frequently, indeed, was his mighty mind poised on questions of gravest import, that the utmost his excessive erudition, caution, and modesty would permit him to arrive at, after months, and often years of patient investigation, was-to doubt. No mastermind of modern times, perhaps, was a more thorough doubter; and yet who dares question his sagacious wit?

reality of the Poor Laws. In this case, as in most others, the law is more beneficial to its administrator-the lawyer-than the party whose interests it is ostensibly designed to subserve.

Of justice, one of the heathen sages has shown, with great acuteness, that it was impressed upon mankind only by the inconveniences which injustice had produced. The passage referred to is the following: "In the first ages, men acted without any rule but the impulse of desire; they practised injustice upon others, and suffered it from others in return; but in time it was discovered that the pain of suffering wrong was greater than the pleasure of doing it, and mankind, by a general compact, submitted to the restraint of laws, and resigned the pleasure to escape the pain." Whether to expediency, the Decalogue, or an intuitive moral sense, we trace its source, it cannot be denied that the abstract principle of justice is essential to the happiness of society. If law were but the synonym of equity and justice, and its administrators, without exception, men of inflexible integrity, would any one be found to complain, as now, of the grievous pecuniary costs and trouble attending its dispensation ?

Law has been compared to a new boot-a luxury which we approach with undisguised reluctance, and quit with supreme delight a thing which transforms the ordinary calm and placable man into a living torment to himself and all around him. In more primitive times, our simple-hearted and trusting grandsires seem to have settled their differences in a much more summary mode than we are accustomed to: possibly because they possessed fewer of those learned expounders of legal lore, whose province, at least in part, appears to be to distort plain common sense and truth into all the tortuous twists and sinuosities of which a lawyer's logic is susceptible. Then, an "action at law" was a mere bagatelle ;-it is not so now; it forms an era in a man's history. Besides, men in those days were more placable, and soon forgot their squabbles and animosities; now, they are not allowed to do so; it would be a direct fraud and infringement upon the rights of the legal subject.