h regard to Sir John
Cheshire's receipts, adds: "The fees of counsel's clerks form a great
contrast with those that are now demanded, being only threepence on a
fee of half-a-guinea, sixpence for a guinea, and one shilling for two
guineas." Of course the increase of clerk's fees tells more in favor of
the master than the servant. At the present time the clerk of a
barrister in fairly lucrative practice costs his master nothing.
Bountifully paid by his employer's clients, he receives no salary from
the counsellor whom he serves; whereas, in old times, when his fees were
fixed at the low rate just mentioned, the clerk could not live and
maintain a family upon them, unless his master belonged to the most
successful grade of his order.

Horace Walpole tells his readers that Charles Yorke "was reported to
have received 100,000 guineas in fees;" but his fee-book shows that his
professional rise was by no means so rapid as those who knew him in his
sunniest days generally supposed. The story of his growing fortunes is
indicated in the following statement of successive incomes:--1st year of
practice at the bar, 121_l._ 2nd, 201_l._; 3rd and 4th, between 300_l._
and 400_l._ per annum; 5th, 700_l._; 6th, 800_l._; 7th, 1000_l._; 9th,
1600_l._; 10th, 2500_l._ Whilst Solicitor General he made 3400_l._ in
1757; and in the following year he earned 5000_l._ His receipts during
the last year of his tenure of the Attorney Generalship amounted to
7322_l._ The reader should observe that as Attorney General he made but
little more than Coke had realized in the same office,--a fact serving
to show how much better paid were Crown lawyers in times when they held
office like judges during the Sovereign's pleasure, than in these latter
days when they retire from place together with their political parties.

The difference between the incomes of Scotch advocates and English
barristers was far greater in the eighteenth century than at the present
time, although in our own day the receipts of several second-rate
lawyers of the Temple and Lincoln's Inn far surpass the revenues of the
most successful advocates of the Edinburgh faculty. A hundred and thirty
years since a Scotch barrister who earned 500_l._ per annum by his
profession was esteemed notably successful.

Just as Charles Yorke's fee-book shows us the pecuniary position of an
eminent English barrister in the middle of the last century, John
Scott's list of receipts displays the prosperity