many good
stories told of artifices by which barristers have delicately intimated
their desire for higher payment, none is better than an anecdote
recorded of Sergeant Hill. A troublesome case being laid before this
most erudite of George III.'s sergeants, he returned it with a brief
note, that he "saw more difficulty in the case than, _under all the
circumstances_, he could well solve." As the fee marked upon the case
was only a guinea, the attorney readily inferred that its smallness was
one of the circumstances which occasioned the counsel's difficulty. The
case, therefore, was returned, with a fee of two guineas. Still
dissatisfied, Sergeant Hill wrote that "he saw no reason to change his
opinion."

By the etiquette of the bar no barrister is permitted to take a brief on
any circuit, save that on which he habitually practises, unless he has
received a special retainer; and no wearer of silk can be specially
retained with a less fee than three hundred guineas. Erskine's first
special retainer was in the Dean of St. Asaph's case, his first speech
in which memorable cause was delivered when he had been called to the
bar but little more than five years. From that time till his elevation
to the bench he received on an average twelve special retainers a year,
by which at the minimum of payment he made L3600 per annum. Besides
being lucrative and honorable, this special employment greatly augmented
his practice in Westminster Hall, as it brought him in personal contact
with attorneys in every part of the country, and heightened his
popularity amongst all classes of his fellow-countrymen. In 1786 he
entirely withdrew from ordinary circuit practice, and confined his
exertions in provincial courts to the causes for which he was specially
retained. No advocate since his time has received an equal number of
special retainers; and if he did not originate the custom of special
retainers,[12] he was the first English barrister who ventured to reject
all other briefs.

There is no need to recapitulate all the circumstances of Erskine's
rapid rise in his profession--a rise due to his effective brilliance and
fervor in political trial: but this chapter on lawyers' fees would be
culpably incomplete, if it failed to notice some of its pecuniary
consequences. In the eighth month after his call to the bar he thanked
Admiral Keppel for a splendid fee of one thousand pounds. A few years
later a legal gossip wrote: "Everybody says that Er