ey-bills,
the privileges of the house, the general interests of the nation, roads,
canals, and inclosures, is their province. The mercantile, and other
interests, composed of men getting money with great rapidity,
consider the abuses of law as not to them of much importance; they do
not feel the inconvenience, and have neither time nor inclination to
study the subject. {98}

The prerogative of the king to refuse his assent, might, perhaps, be
expected to come in as a protection, but here there is least of all any
thing to be expected. In the first place, it is thought to be wise never to
use that prerogative, and, in the second place, the lord-high-chancellor
is the king's guide in every thing of the sort, insomuch, that he is
styled the keeper of the king's conscience.

With power, influence, and interest on one side, and nothing to oppose
it on the other, (for the common proverb is true, as all common

---
{98} The law is the widest, and the shortest, and the nearest road to a
peerage. A Howe, Nelson, and St. Vincent, play a game, partly of
skill, and partly of chance, for title; they must have luck and
opportunity. The others are sure with fewer competitors to have more
prizes.
-=-

[end of page #120]

proverbs are, that what is every body's business is nobody's,) the
lawyers must encroach on the public, and they have done so to a most
alarming degree.

In this case, it is not, as in others, where the great cut out work for and
employ the small. No. The great generally (indeed almost always)
begin with the advice and by the means of an attorney, who is only
supposed to understand law-practice. The proceeding does not
originate with the council, who could form some judgment of the
justice of the case, so that a mean petty-fogging attorney may, for a
trifle, which he puts into his own pocket, ruin two ignorant and honest
men; he may set the ablest council to work, and occupy, for a time, the
courts of justice, to the general interruption of law, and injury of the
public.

This is, perhaps, one of the greatest and most crying evils in the land,
and calls out the most loudly for redress, as the effects are very
universal. In a commercial country, so many interests clash, and there
are such a variety of circumstances, that the vast swarms of attorneys,
who crowd the kingdom, find no difficulty in misleading one of the
parties, and that is the cause of most law-suits.

As commercial wealth increases the evil a