rascal; so that you may be willing to
confide the management of your affairs to him, although you will not
trust him with anything else.

It is curious that the rule applied to the defamation of lawyers is
reversed in its application to invective against legislators. Members of
Parliament are censurable if they impute falsehood and scoundrelism to
each other in a personal sense, but not censurable for making those
imputations in a Parliamentary sense. The theory of this anomaly seems
to be, that the affairs of political life cannot be conducted without
deceit and baseness, and accordingly that there is no offence in
accusing an honourable gentleman of evincing those qualities in
labouring at his vocation, that is to say for his country's good, for
which it is necessary that he should cheat and deceive.

The law of slander, partially applied to attorneys, ought perhaps to be
wholly inapplicable in the case of barristers. If a counsel may suggest
to a jury a supposition which he knows to be false, and particularly
one, which at the same time tends to criminate some innocent person; and
if he is to be allowed to make such a suggestion for his client's
benefit, he is allowed to be base and deceitful for the benefit of his
client. To charge him with deception and villainy in his character of
advocate, is to accuse him of professional zeal; to advantage him, not
injure him, in his business. It ought to be lawful to call him a liar
and a scoundrel in a forensic sense, as well as in every other.

* * * * *

THE HARDEST OF ALL SWEARING.

When LORD BROUGHAM, the other evening, was presenting some petition for
the abolition of oaths, there were certain oaths in particular which he
might have taken the opportunity of recommending the Legislature to do
away with. They are alluded to in the following passage from a letter
signed CENSOR in the _Times:_--

"As a condition of admission, the Head and Fellows of all Colleges
are enjoined to take oaths to the inviolable observance of all the
enactments of the statutes. These oaths, to use the words of the
commission, increase in stringency and solemnity, in proportion as
the statutes become more minute and less capable of being observed.
These oaths are not only required but actually taken. Men of high
feeling, refinement, education, and, for the most part, dedicated in
an especial manner to God's service, are called on