rbuss "--if you bought him he blew your
opponent's brains out; if your opponent bought him he blew yours out. His
weapon is the law, but his object is not justice. As often as not he aims
at defeating justice, and the more skilful a lawyer he is the more
injustice he succeeds in doing. It is this detachment from the merits of a
case, this deliberate repudiation of conscience in his business relations
that makes him so suspect. Of course he has a very sound reply. "It is my
business to put my client's case, and my opponent's business to put his
client's case. And it is the business of the judge and jury to see that
justice is done as between us." That is true, but it does not get rid of
the suspicion that attaches to a man who fights for the guilty or the
innocent with equal fervour.

And then he deals in such a tricky article. When Sancho Panza was Governor
of the Island of Barataria he administered justice. If he had been the
Governor of the Island of Britain he would have administered the law, and
his decisions would have been very different. Law has about the same
relation to justice that grammar has to Shakespeare. If Shakespeare were
put in the dock and tried by the grammarians he would be condemned as a
rogue and vagabond, and, similarly, justice is not infrequently hanged by
the lawyers. We must have law just as we must have grammar, but we have no
love for either of them. They are dry, bloodless sciences, and we look
askance at those who practice them. You may be the greatest rascal of your
time, but if you study the law and keep within its letter the strong lance
of justice cannot reach you. No, law which is the servant of justice often
betrays his master.

But do not let us be unjust. If law to-day is more nearly the instrument of
justice than it has ever been, it is the great lawyers to whom we chiefly
owe the fact. There are Dodsons and Foggs in the law, but there are also
Pyms and Pratts who have upheld the liberties of this country in the teeth
of tyrant kings and servile Parliaments.

ON THE CHEERFULNESS OF THE BLIND

I was coming off a Tube train last evening when some one said to me: "Will
you please give this gentleman an arm to the lift? He is blind." I did so,
and found, as I usually find in the case of the blind, that my companion
was uncommonly talkative and cheerful. This gaiety of the blind is a
perpetual wonder to me. It is as though the outer light being quenched an
inner light of th