he was completely laid upon the shelf, and almost down to the day of his death, which occurred in his eighty-seventh year, Lord Eldon never drank less than three pints of port daily with or after his dinner.

Of eminent lawyers who were steady port-wine drinkers, Baron Platt—the amiable and popular judge who died in 1862, aged seventy-two years-may be regarded as one of the last. Of him it is recorded that in early manhood he was so completely prostrated by severe illness that beholders judged him to be actually dead. Standing over his silent body shortly before the arrival of the undertaker, two of his friends concurred in giving utterance to the sentiment: "Ah, poor dear fellow, we shall never drink a glass of wine with him again;" when, to their momentary alarm and subsequent delight, the dead man interposed with a faint assumption of jocularity, "But you will though, and a good many too, I hope." When the undertaker called he was sent away a genuinely sorrowful man; and the young lawyer, who was "not dead yet," lived to old age and good purpose.

CHAPTER LXXII.

BEFORE AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION.

ENOUGH has

NOUGH has been said in the foregoing pages to show that the independence and purity, which in recent times have universally characterized the English bench, were not always found amongst our dispensers of justice in days when they derived their incomes chiefly from fees, and were removable at the monarch's discretion; and when conscientious Chancellors, anxious to create a bench of judges who should neither stand in servile awe of the crown, nor be dangerously eager for the voluntary contributions of suitors, abstained from recommending for judicial preferment those members of the bar who were not known to possess private fortunes.* Enough also has been advanced to satisfy the reader that the fearless independence of the bar-a quality about which the sedition advocates, as they were termed, of George III.'s time, delighted to utter sonorous platitudes-is not less conspicuous at the present date than it was in reigns when a sovereign not only exercised a strong influence on counsel through pliant judges, but often condescended personally to express gratitude to barristers who defended, and enmity to barristers who opposed, his encroachments. Indeed, however much the admission may wound lawyers who are keenly interested in the historic honour of their order, it must be confessed that in

* So well was this principle understood in the time of James I., that when Chief Justice Popham sent to Egerton the names of four aspirants to the bench, he took care to inform his lordship that they were all rich men. “I have thought good," wrote Popham, "to recommend these names to your L. to be preferred to hys Matie to make hys choyse of two, if it may seeme good to your L., or to add or to alter the same as your L. shall thynk best: my brother Danyell, my brother Williams, my brother Tanfyld, and my brother Altham, all men learned and of good estate."Egerton Papers.

tegrity was by no means common upon the bench, and that courage was far from universal at the bar, at those periods of English history when judges saw their profit in corruption, and when a character for nice honour was not calculated to bring a young barrister into favour with the distributors of patronage.

Nor is the existing etiquette of the Law much more ancient than its morality.* In olden times our great advocates exercised their profession in a manner that would occasion lively scandal at the present day. They publicly and in their own persons touted for business; they made time-bargains with their clients; they accepted for their services payment in kind; and they constantly performed work which no solicitor of the present day would do with his own hand. Long after the serjeants used to visit St. Paul's daily during term, after twelve o'clock dinner, and standing at their pillars sell legal opinions just as orange-girls vend oranges in the public ways, it was their custom to communicate with their lay employers without the intervention of attorneys.

Early in the seventeenth century certain members of the bar laid themselves out specially for chamber-practice; and during the Commonwealth and under Charles II. the conveyancers became a distinct division of the practising bar. Thus Orlando

* In every period of its history the law has comprised within its ranks men of stainless probity and noble principles; but the high reputation for moral worth as well as intellectual ability, which the profession has enjoyed for several generations (notwithstanding the occurrence of many painful scandals, and notwithstanding the unqualified blackness of its notorious black sheep), must be attributed to the reforms introduced at the great Revolution of '88. Of course the law did not in a day or even in a single generation discard the low tone and moral laxity which prevailed amongst her members under the Stuarts; but no one familiar with the annals of Westminster Hall will deny that James II.'s fall was followed by a most striking change for the better in every grade of legal practitioners. Judges ceased to scold like tipsy women; counsellors learnt to contend with an appearance of decorum when their passions were most excited; and attorneys assumed honesty when they did not really possess it. With the course of time the court manner of barristers grew more and more gentlemanlike, and it became more and more generally accepted amongst them that professional privilege did not entitle them to infringe the laws of honour. For several years, usages that savoured of corruption lingered in the courts, and so late as the Wilkes and Junius trials, a wearer of the ermine (Sir Richard Aston) is believed to have accepted a bribe; but steadily the moral atmosphere of the law became purer, and its tone identical with that of the highest classes of society.

Bridgeman was an eminent chamber-counsel and conveyancer during the ascendancy of Cromwell; and his course was not exceptional amongst the few loyalist lawyers of that period who chose to work as draughtsmen, (indicating their political sympathies by the literal peculiarities of their work,) rather than seek business in Westminster Hall, where they would be compelled to express respect for republican judges. Francis North's skill at conveyancing is especially mentioned by his biographer, who observes, "I can with assurance say, that he was no less expert, at that sort of practice, than any one of his time, although professing no other." Francis North had a considerable amount of conveyancer's business; and not only did he take instructions from his clients without the intervention of the inferior branch of the profession, but in the earlier years of his professional career he habitually did the work of a mere law-writer. "At the beginning of his business," says Roger, "he had no clerk, and not only drew but ingrossed instruments himself, and, when he was in full practice, he scrupled not to write anything himself. A lady in Norfolk told me he made up some agreements for her; and, at the sealing, a bond was wanted, and there was no attorney, or clerk, at hand to draw it, so they were at a stand; and then he took the pen, and said, 'I think it will not foul my fingers if I do it myself;' and thereupon he made the bond, and it was scaled. I have often heard him complain of the community of the conveyancers, and say that some of them were pack-horses, and could not go out of their road."

It appears also that as early as the seventeenth century young barristers were accustomed to "devil" for the leaders of Westminster Hall-i.e., to assist eminent counsellors who had more business than they could transact without professional coadjutors; the assistance being rendered for the sake of introduction to attorneys and practice. Thus Francis North for a while devilled in Sir Geoffrey Palmer's chambers, and at a later period of his career extended a not disinterested patronage to Syderfin, the famous reporter, whose knowledge of law won the respect of the Temple gallants, who, notwithstanding their homage to his attainments, could not forbear from deriding his uncouth appearance, stooping figure, and singularly

awkward gait. His connexion with Francis North was very profitable to Syderfin, and would have been productive of still greater advantage had he lived longer; but before North placed his head on the pillow of the Common Pleas, the reporter had departed to another world, leaving an ample fortune to the pretty girl whom he married whilst she was still under age, and whose forcible removal to France after her husband's death by "Sarsfield the raptor" supplied Charles II.'s London with a most exciting cause célèbre.

But though Charles II.'s bar adopted some of our existing arrangements for subdividing legal labour, and controlling the relations of lawyers and clients, many years passed before barristers devised all, or unanimously observed any, of the regulations which make up the code of bar etiquette at the present time. In the seventeenth century clients almost always insisted on having personal interviews with their counsel, and though their attorneys or solicitors usually conducted them to counsel's chambers* and were present during the conferences, no member of the inferior branch of the profession deemed himself affronted or ill-used if a client chose to confer with his advocate without the presence of a third person. Long into the following century barristers of every grade used to act for clients without the co-operation of the inferior branch in cases where no process of court required the employment of an attorney or solicitor; and they were accustomed to receive their lay clients in the coffee-houses fast by Westminster Hall and the Inns of Court, just as the eighteenth-century physician used to sit at an appointed hour of each day in his public coffee-room, and write prescriptions for such patients as came to consult him whilst he drank his wine. Hogarth's Marriage à la Mode' contains amusing illustrations of the change in legal etiquette since the time when a young barrister did not think it beneath his dignity to draw up a marriage-settlement, and personally superintend its execution in the house of a wealthy client.

*Speaking of his eminent brother, Roger North says-" He could, over night, just, and but just, admit his clients and their agents;" but though the client and agent are thus described as visiting together, Francis North, in his palmiest days, used to act for clients without the intervention of an attorney.