AUTHORS ON LAWYERS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2224, 9 October 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

AUTHORS ON LAWYERS.

Sir Thomas More admitted no lawyers to his " Utopia," regarding them as men 1 whose profession it is to disguise matter as well as to arrest laws.' To this it may be replied that it is a poor Utopia whose subjects should be still so far below human perfectibility as to require the intervention of the professors its creator sneers at. Ben Johnson was not well inspired in iuditiug such a miserable epitaph as this — God wdrks wonders now and then ; Here lies a lawyer, an honest man ; and the sarcasms of Swift were as far removed from truth as they were unworthy of his calling and virile ability. "Hudibras" is full of ill-natured gibes against the profession. Nothing in it, however, is so deliberately unjust as Swift's aspersion of a class ' bred up from their youth in the art of proving that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid.' An anonymous author published a remarkable volume in 1737, which he had the temerity to dedicate to Lord Hard wick, who having lately been Chief Justice of the King's Bench, had just been appointed Lord Chancellor. In this scandalous book every branch of the legal profession is held up to universal ridicule and contempt. One scene represents the judg. ment seat of Minas, iEitcus, and Rhadamanthus, before whom lawyers of all degrees are summoned, and the char apes against them solemnly presented. Out of the thousands that appear — including judges, sergeants, barristers, attorneys, solicitors, and bailiffs — only one attorney and two barristers wore acquitted. Even Coleridge, so eminently the poet of gentle thoughts, seems to have been moved to join in the general chorus when he wrote the verse — He saw a lawyer killing a viper On a dung-heap beside his stable, And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother Abel." — Glole.

A newspaper speaks of a man being "gored by an angry bull," as if a goodnatured bull would do such a thing. At a Salvation Army Congress in Leeds General Booth stated that the Army was in great straits, and was blocked for money and men in all directions. The North-west Buffalo Breeding Company has just been incorporated in Canada. The intention is to cross the buffalo with the polled Aberdeen* Angus breed. It is estimated that the hide alone of the new cattle will be nearly double the average price of polled heifers, and they will be valuable animals in other respects. The result of this experiment will be awaited with much interest. The Luck of Mark Twain. — Great through •' Mark Twain's" profits have been from his books, he has of late years made far larger sums as a partner in a New York publishing firm which trades nnder the name of Messrs Webster and Co. It was in a large measure due to the firm's action that General Grant was led to write his own memoirs, and now it would seem that the enterprise of the senior partner, "Mr Charles L. Webster, 1 ' who is identical with Mr Clemens, alias " Mark Twain," has secured what is nearly sure to be another publishing triumph for the concern. This new coup is the life of the present Pope, not only dedicated to, but actually corrected, if not wholly edited by his Holiness, who has been persuaded in some mysterious manner to associate him* self with the work. It is not so much in Eugland and America that Messrs Webster and Co. hope to dispose of their coming volumes. Editions in French and Italian are to be simultaneously published in Paris, Rome, and other European capitals, while there is also to be a special issue in Latin for the use of the more devout and learned Roman Catholics of all nations,