realized by counsel in departments of the profession that do not invite
the attention of the general public, would astonish those uninformed
persons who estimate the success of a barrister by the frequency with
which his name appears in the newspaper reports of trials and suits. The
talkers of the bar enjoy more _eclat_ than the barristers who confine
themselves to chamber practice, and their labors lead to the honors of
the bench; but a young lawyer, bent only on the acquisition of wealth,
is more likely to achieve his ambition by conveyancing or
arbitration-business than by court-work. Kenyon was never a popular or
successful advocate, but he made L3000 a year by answering cases.
Charles Abbott at no time of his life could speak better than a
vestryman of average ability; but by drawing informations and
indictments, by writing opinions on cases, he made the greater part of
the eight thousand pounds which he returned as the amount of his
professional receipts in 1807. In our own time, when that popular common
law advocate, Mr. Edwin James, was omnipotent with juries, his income
never equalled the incomes of certain chamber-practitioners whose names
are utterly unknown to the general body of English society.

[12] Lord Campbell observes: "Some say that special retainers began with
Erskine; but I doubt the fact." It is strange that there should be
uncertainty as to the time when special retainers--unquestionably a
comparatively recent innovation in legal practice--came into vogue.

CHAPTER XIV.

JUDICIAL CORRUPTION.

To a young student making his first researches beneath the surface of
English history, few facts are more painful and perplexing than the
judicial corruption which prevailed in every period of our country's
growth until quiet recent times--darkening the brightest pages of our
annals, and disfiguring some of the greatest chieftains of our race.

Where he narrates the fall and punishment of De Weyland towards the
close of the thirteenth century, Speed observes: "While the Jews by
their cruel usuries had in one way eaten up the people, the justiciars,
like another kind of Jews, had ruined them with delay in their suits,
and enriched themselves with wicked convictions." Of judicial corruption
in the reigns of Edward I. and Edward II. a vivid picture is given in a
political ballad, composed in the time of one or the other of those
monarchs. Of this poem Mr. Wright, in his 'Political Songs,' gives a