CHAPTER XXXIX

I am going to the parliament;
You understand this bag. If you have any business
Depending there be short, and let me hear it,
And pay your fees.

Little French Lawyer


'Shall you be able to carry this honest fellow's cause for him?'
said Mannering.

'Why, I don't know; the battle is not to the strong, but he shall
come off triumphant over Jock of Dawston if we can make it out. I
owe him something. It is the pest of our profession that we seldom
see the best side of human nature. People come to us with every
selfish feeling newly pointed and grinded; they turn down the very
caulkers of their animosities and prejudices, as smiths do with
horses' shoes in a white frost. Many a man has come to my garret
yonder that I have at first longed to pitch out at the window, and
yet at length have discovered that he was only doing as I might
have done in his case, being very angry, and of course very
unreasonable. I have now satisfied myself that, if our profession
sees more of human folly and human roguery than others, it is
because we witness them acting in that channel in which they can
most freely vent themselves. In civilised society law is the
chimney through which all that smoke discharges itself that used