In this way, all that is selfish among the Athenian Whigs can be kept in the back-ground; and as the principles which they abet are much more rational in themselves, much more agreeable to the general feelings of mankind, and much better adapted for declamation, than those which their opponents profess--when they venture to profess any thing, the Whigs always have had, and always will continue to have, the best of the argument, and the finest of the eloquence upon their side. But though they be by far the most numerous, and the most specious, their chances of success bear no proportion either to their numbers or the apparent superiority of their cause. The opposite party have the command of the public purse, and when the two parties strive, they are thus enabled to throw the expense of both sides upon their antagonists. Such are a few of the principles and practices of Athenian politics,--a war of words, of which it would be no easy matter to define the object, or calculate the end.
----“Lawyers have more sober sense Than t’ argue at their own expense, But make their best advantages Of others’ quarrels, like the Swiss; And out of foreign controversies, By aiding both sides, fill their purses.”--BUTLER.
WHATEVER airs the Athens may give herself in other matters, however she may boast of her taste and her elegance, talk of her science and her literature, or cherish the mouldering skeleton of her medical school, no one can be a day within her precincts without discovering that the law is her Alpha and her Omega,--the food which she eats, the raiment she puts on, the dwelling-house which she inhabits, the conversation in which she engages, the soul which animates her whole frame, the mind which is discovered in every feature of her countenance, and every attitude of her body. Once destroy that, or remove it to another place, and the pride of the Athens would be at an end: you might lodge owls in all her palaces, and graze cattle in all her streets.
From the way in which the Scottish courts of law are regulated, there is hardly a suit from the Solway Firth to the Pentland, or from Peterhead to the remotest of the Hebudæ, which does not look toward the Athens, the moment that the litigiousness of a client, or the machinations of an attorney, call it into existence. I hinted already, that there is no one thing in which the Athens can now retain a superiority except the practice of Scotch law; and, as Scotland increases in wealth, that law is so constructed, that the portion which the scribes and spouters of the Athens shall be enabled to levy upon their countrymen must always increase in a greater ratio. Scotchmen are apt to be proud of the Athens,--to regard her with a portion at least of that admiration which subjects pay to the pomp of their kings. There is propriety in this; for there is scarcely a stone in the walls of the Athenian palaces, or a decent coat in her streets, which has not been squeezed out of some litigious or unfortunate man of the provinces, in the shape of a lawyer’s fee. I noticed the power which the crown lawyers of Scotland have over the liberties and lives of the people; and the power which lawyers of another class have over the fortunes of the Scotch lairds, is every jot as ruinous and humiliating. There are complaints in England, that when once property gets into chancery, the “infant” becomes grey before he can enjoy it; but the Scottish chancery is incalculably worse; for the moment that a Scotch proprietor allows his lands to pass into the keeping of an Edinburgh agent, from that moment he must lay his account either with losing them altogether, or purchasing them anew; and to enumerate the heirs of Scottish families, who are at any time pining away in heart-broken obscurity, or toiling under the burning suns of the East or the West, in the hope of winning back a poor fragment of the ample heritage to which they were born, would require no trifling succession of pages.