displeasure seldom cares to
discriminate between the blameless and the culpable members of an
obnoxious system, or to distinguish between the errors of ancient custom
and the qualities of those persons who are required to carry out old
rules. Hence the really honest and useful practitioners of the law
endured a full share of the obloquy caused by the misconduct of venal
justices and corrupt officials. Counsel, attorneys, and even scriveners
came in for abuse. It was averred that they conspired to pick the public
pocket; that eminent conveyancers not less than copying clerks, swelled
their emoluments by knavish tricks. They would talk for the mere purpose
of protracting litigation, injure their clients by vexations and
bootless delays, and do their work so that they might be fed for doing
it again. Draughtsmen find their clerks wrote loosely and wordily,
because they were paid by the folio. "A term," writes the quaint author
of 'Saint Hillaries Teares,' in 1642, "so like a vacation; the prime
court, the Chancery (wherein the clerks had wont to dash their clients
out of countenance with long dashes); the examiners to take the
depositions in hyperboles, and roundabout _Robinhood_ circumstances with
_saids_ and _aforesaids_, to enlarge the number of sheets." 'Hudibras'
contains, amongst other pungent satires against the usages of lawyers,
an allusion to this characteristic custom of legal draughtsmen, who
being paid by the sheet, were wont

"To make 'twixt words and lines large gaps,
Wide as meridians in maps;
To squander paper and spare ink,
Or cheat men of their words some think."

In the following century the abuses consequent on the objectionable
system of folio-payment were noticed in a parliamentary report (bearing
date November 8, 1740), which was the most important result of an
ineffectual attempt to reform the superior courts of law and to lessen
the expenses of litigation.

More is known about the professional receipts of lawyers since the
Revolution of 1688 than can be discovered concerning the incomes of
their precursors in Westminster Hall. For six years, commencing with
Michaelmas Term, 1719, Sir John Cheshire, King's Sergeant, made an
average annual income of 3241_l._ Being then sixty-three years of age,
he limited his practice to the Common Pleas, and during the next six
years made in that one court 1320_l._ per annum. Mr. Foss, to whom the
present writer is indebted for these particulars wit