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A76404 A letter to an honourable member of Parliament, shewing the abuses committed by attornies, sollicitors, &c. Containing reasons for passing a bill for the regulation and retrenchment of that profession. A. B. 1700 (1700) Wing B18A; ESTC R172626 6,084 4

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A LETTER TO AN Honourable Member OF PARLIAMENT Shewing The Abuses committed by Attornies Sollicitors c. Containing REASONS for passing a Bill for the Regulation and Retrenchment of that Profession SIR AFTER such signal Instances of the good effects the Councils of your Honourable House have produced there is no hearty Lover of his Country but must believe that God designs great Blessings for this Nation and seems to make you his Ministers for the execution of his Purposes And I should be wanting in my Duty did I not honour you in particular for the active Zeal you have constantly shewn for the Good and Welfare of your Native Country which should illustrate it self in a more publick manner did not your Modesty force the contrary The last time I had the Honour of your Conversation you was pleased to complain to me of the strange and unaccountable Cheats and Knaveries practised by the Attornies Sollicitors c. of your Neighbourhood in the Country of their excessive Numbers and daily Increase You seemed to have made a Resolution to endeavour the redressing the Grievances the poor People lie under upon their account and likewise to retrench their Numbers and lay such a Foundation that for the future that Profession may not be a grievance but of use to this Nation It would seem presumptuous Sir in me to moote your Purposes and to give but a faint Applause of what your judgment has Stampt for good would injure my parcel of Reasons and therefore since I cannot sufficiently commend this your charitable Resolution I will forbear to say any thing farther in Commendation of it And Sir If I have met with any thing that may be thought worthy of your Consideration I should esteem my self wanting in that Duty which I owe if I should not lay it before you And if there be as some tell us certain Lineaments in the Face of Truth with which one cannot be deceived because they are not to be counterfeited I hope the Considerations which I herein presume to offer to you may so far resemble it as to meet with your Approbation And I do not doubt but in a few Months this Office by your Councils will be brought back to its purest and most refined State be purged from its gross Abuses its Defects supply'd and superfluous Branches lopt off That the worthy Members of it as well as the generality of the Kingdom may have Reason to thank the Honourable House for so great a Good A Man Sir of a very small Intelligence can give you large Accounts of their Knaveries and Cheats which are in every bodies Mouth but especially if he has had the ill Luck to fall into some of their Clutches for they are so tenacious of a good Prize that they seldom leave him till his Pockets are empty and then the Cause comes to an end The two Makebates bring their Clients to a view and soon make up the matter But this is after no more can be gotten out of them when the Life of the Cause is gone and when more Money is spent in Law than the value of the thing quarrelled for But in promptu Causa est the Reason is very obvious and a Man with half an Eye may see the occasion of this Abuse viz. the Number of the present Attornies for the Clerk of the Warrants of the Court of Common Pleas informs me that there is above 1400 belonging to that Court and I believe there is few less of the King's-bench and then Sir to consider so many Men striving to get their Livings setting honest People together by the Ears that so they may pick their Pockets and practising other Villanies to inrich themselves will make the Words of a Reverend Judge of the Court of Common Pleas viz. That a Country Attorney is worse than a wild Beast almost Morally demonstrable and if they were as bad in the time of Ed. 4. as they are now Septies viginti were too many and half the number would have been more than enough Nay 6 Attornies in former Days were thought sufficient for a whole County And if 6 good ones were enough for a County formerly surely 60 are too many now Our Ancestors were careful how they harboured these sort of Creatures amongst them as being sensible what bad Neighbours they were But Sir they are not all Attornies who go under that Denomination but a Pack of Rascals who are the Authors of more villanous Practices a parcel of poor pittiful knavish Sollicitors Petty-foggers and Makebates whose Profession it is to promote differences to pick flaws in Titles and to advance the Chicanerie or wrangling part of the Law and it would amaze a Man of Integrity and Honesty to hear them in their Clubs make their brags and value themselves upon their knavish Performances Sir The Number of this Rank is very great I do not pretend to make an exact Computation but I may reasonably affirm that it exceeds that of the Attorneys of both the other Courts joyned together above five times This Sir give me leave to mention it to you is insufferable forasmuch as their Practice is an incroachment upon both King and People and I dare affirm and you have often concurred with me in my Opinion that were all those that practice in this sort forced to become Attornies 't would raise the King a very considerable Sum of Money But this Sir with humble submission will be no way to promote the Cause in hand and it would be a great hardship upon the honest Attornies for these Men who never served as Clerks according to the Rules of the Courts to be thus advanced into the same Rank with those who have And I think a broken Tradesman a blockheadly Scrivener or a poor Vagabond ought not to intermeddle in so Honourable a Profession for with your leave Sir I give it that Character it having been so accounted in former Days and no doubt would be so again could it once receive the Honour of coming under the care of your Honourable House altho' perhaps these may think their Case a little hard to be debarred from getting some Money by that Profession now by which they have lost so much formerly but Sir fiat Justitia si ruat Caelum and they themselves cannot but chuse but confess did not Interest rule but that their Practice is a great hardship upon the others who have paid for and laboured to obtain what these usurp I could Sir say much more upon this Point but that I fear I shall be too prolix and troublesome for I have a great deal yet behind to trouble you with Another great Abuse committed by Attornies is their taking such a Multitude of Clerks that I dare affirm there is not two in ten of twenty Years practice but what have had fifteen Clerks this Sir give me leave to call a great Abuse since I believe not one Attorney in 40 has sufficient Practice to employ 2 Clerks but granting they had the
Abuse would be the same because the evil is the increase and over stocking the Profession Whereas on the contrary was every Attorney allowed but one Clerk and he to serve him seven Years the Number would not increase so prodigiously and besides there would then be Work for a parcel of poor Men who make it their Employment and live by Copying and Engrossing other Persons overplus Business But Sir I believe I shall not be mistaken if I tell you that some Attornies live by it and their Clerks keep them and I think 150 and 200 l. a piece which most Attorneys take with their Clerks is an intollerable Price not Sir that all pay after that rate for then so many poor People could not afford to put their Children to this Practice some are taken as Foot-boys and from holding a Stirrup advance by degrees to this pitch and indeed it will be found upon Examination that too many of the Members of this Profession are those whom their Parents intend shall live upon their Wits and generally set forward into the World with but a small beginning and portion of their Fathers Estates But this Sir I account an abuse and it is only the Scandal it now lies under that possesses People with such mean thoughts of it and I believe you will concur with me if I say that 't is as necessary that one of this Profession should have as good a fortune to begin with as is requisite in most other Employments And therefore Sir I humbly think that it would not be amiss if none were allowed to put their Children to this practice but who were able and likewise would give them enough to subsist without being Knaves for nothing brings so much scandal upon a Profession as the sordidness and poverty of its Professors Besides all this Sir the Attornies are so negligent in giving Instruction to the Clerks they take that it must be one of some Ingenuity who can profit by their Instructions they think they perform their Duty if they barely let them see their Business but never take care to inform their Understandings and shew them those things which do not fall in the way of their Practice how this stands with their Consciences they know best But Sir this is not only a private Damage but a publick Evil 't is this makes so many Good Causes miscarry and the Law be accounted but as a Lottery wherein the Knave may sooner win then the honest Man be the Cause good or bad I do not intend this Sir as an Argument against Young-men no on the Contrary they ought to be encouraged and I have abundance more to say against the Old ones those who by their long and constant Practice have learnt more ways to Cheat than they will impart to their Clerks and according to the Proverb A Young Lawyer and an old Physician are always best for he is not so used to Cheating and therefore must stand upon his Guard and is likeliest too to take the most care of a Cause because he is beginning to live and must strive for a Reputation but the old lazy Attornies who have feathered their Nests well are loath to move and Cuckoe like leave their Eggs to be hatched by other Birds commonly trusting their business with their Clerks while they drink at the Tavern and take their Pleasure in the Country By this means Sir we come to have such an encrease of Attornies and they by their Tricks and Knaveries such a decrease of Business that in truth half of them follow such as does not belong to their Profession and amongst the rest one way by which some of the worst sort of them live is by being Commissioners in Statutes of Bankrupt You may easily suppose Sir That making this their Profession they strive to get as much by it as they can and by their means those good Laws which our Parliaments have made for the Advantage of Creditors are so ordered that they really turn more to the Advantage of the Commissioners than any else whereby the Creditor loses his Money or at least the greatest part of it and the poor Debtor be he a Knave or an honest Man 't is all the same thing is ruined and all this by the Practice of the Commssioners who lull the Creditors on to a vigorous Prosecution of the Bankrupt and under an Insinuation that the Bankrupt is a Knave blind the Creditors Eyes from perceiving that they themselves are really the greatest These Practises of theirs are as light as Day and I profess I have often wondred that your Honours have not been often besought for Relief in this Matter but I believe Fear has been an active cause of the contrary the poor Debtor almost lying at their Mercies and dare not adventure so far as to seek Redress from your Honourable House If all were sensible of this Abuse certainly Compassion would cause an effectual Provision to be made for it for while such mercenary Men have a hand in the Commissions not only Justice will be bought and sold and he that bids most shall certainly have most but the poor Debtor is in a fair way to be ruin'd not by having his Estate divided amongst his Creditors for that would be no hard case but eat up by the Kings Commissioners and I believe there is no necessity for proving the badness of their Title to it I have one word concerning the Oath which the Attornies take when they are admitted This Sir pardon me If I call useless as indeed are most of the present customary Oaths For as it is now worded there is not one Attorney in a hundred that keeps it And therefore my humble Motion is that a way may be found out that since an Oath will not bind them some thing should be provided that would and I believe nothing would be so obligatory and difficultly broken as if besides a new Oath their Duty was inforced by a Bond to his Majesty and the new Oath to be so drawn as to be more expressive such a one as the Wisdom of the House of Commons shall prepare this is sometimes found to be more binding than that Ceremony called an Oath as some Gentlemen are pleased to term it which they think is of so little use that ten to one they forget it before they go to Sleep Should I set about it Sir not to mention their Practices upon Juries and Witnesses I could give you so large an Account of the Knaveries practiced by Country Attornies that if you heard it all it would be tiresome to you and so out of good Manners I will forbear to recite such mean and numerous Rogueries But to give you a Specimen of them I would not have you surprized if I affirm that they have their Men on purpose to create and promote Quarels and Controversies in their Neighbourhoods and then to employ them in patching them up again These are surprizing Villanies such as are hardly credible but their Agents here in Town can give a strange Account of them and the little pitiful Actions which they Commence and Prosecute and how frequently they are employed to prosecute Assaults and Batteries which are generally brought about by their forementioned Officers Nay the very Officers of the Courts which is strange because they act herein against their own Interest have often declared themselves ashamed to sign their Proceedings the Causes of Action have been so very trivial And the Ingenious Author of the second Letter to a Member of Parliament concerning the Growth of Popery the last Session did not without reason complain of the Abuses the Papists committed under the mask of this Office And I believe Sir I could give you convincing Arguments but I will not trouble you with an Argument upon a Matter of which you are already convinced that if it was but barely for this Reason a scrutiny ought to be made into the probity of the Members of this Profession And I dare say Sir that if a Committee were appointed to hear and take Depositions You and the whole House would be throughly satisfied of the great necessity there is of your care in this Matter 'T is not I 'll assure You Sir a Melancholly Vtinam of my own but the Desire of sounder Judgments that your House would take some order about this Profession And if what I have before told you be true and I do assure you Sir you may depend upon my Word that it is then I hope I may call them Abuses and such as come within the Care of your House for unless some Remedy be applied I see no end of them And this Sir seemed to be the sence of the last Session by twice reading a Bill for retrenching their Numbers which you have informed me would have gone nigh to have passed into an Act had not the more important business of the Irish Forfeitures taken up so much of your time and the Session been so near a Conclusion I would not have you Sir to Imagine that what you find in this Paper is half of what might be alledged against them No this is but the substance of some of my own superficial Observations 'T is not for me Sir To offer a Model to the House of Commons The Fountain of Good Counsel and Wisdom Power and Redress but humbly to hope they will take this important business into their Honourable Consideration and when they shall be pleased so to do I cannot but expect to see a good and solid Foundation laid which can be displeasing to none but those who by their evil Practices have rendred themselves obnoxious to and deserve the utmost Severity And Pardon me Sir If I make bold to request you in particular to employ your Interest in this Affair 't will be a Work of Charity as well as Justice to lend a helping hand to it I am not Insensible Sir how I interrupt You and I should stand in need of an Appology was this not for the Common Good which to you is a good Excuse I shall always importune Heaven to furnish me with so happy a Power as may render me in some acceptable Service Worthy Sir not only Your faithful but Your Grateful Humble Servant A. B. LONDON Printed for and sold by J. Nutt near Stationers-Hall Price 2 d.