A SUPERFLUITY OF LAWYERS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1325, 5 July 1883, Page 4

A SUPERFLUITY OF LAWYERS.

The 11 Pall Mall Gaaette " says that gentlemen before deciding to adopt the Bar as a profession would do well to study the Law List for 1883. “ A correspondent,” adds the “ Gaxette,” “ who seems to have taken considerable pains to know bow many brethren of the long robe we have, wri'es that of the 7,500 members of the Bar of England, 13 per cent appear to be in practice abroad, 37 per cent appear to be in practice here, and 50 per cent appear not to practice at all. Still the 87 per cent who are in practice here amount in all to 2,700, so that, when opened, the 19 courts in the new Law Courts could each be provided with a separate Bar consisting of about 145 practicing counsels. Eefering to this statement, an American paper advises the briefless lawyers to emigrate, but not to the United States, which is well supplied with them already. “ 1 here are,” it says, “ 65,000 lawyers all kinds already in the United States, and as very few of them have patrimonial estates to support them they must manage to pick up a living by their profesion. When the Spaniards began colonising America they forbade the emigration thither of any of their lawyers —not that they needed them all at home, but out of compassion to the people of this continent. Rousseau sarcastically remarked that the Spaniards desired, by this single act, to atone to the unfortunate Mexicans and Peruvians for all the horrible barbarities inflicted on them by Cories and Pizsaro.” With all due respect to the gentlemen of the long robe, we do not think the colonies need any more of them just at present, the supply being equal to the demand. We (“ H. B. Herald ”) therefore trust those lawyers in the Old. Country who are inclined to seek “ fresh fields and pastures new,” will not turn their attention to this portion of the globe, but will give India, China, British North America, the Cape of Good Hope, Egypt, New Guinea, or some other part of the world as far distant as possible from New Zealand, a trial first. They can take our word for it, that we have too much law in this colony already, and that the makers of it and those who have to enforce it or in any way to live by it, have hard work to make both ends meet.