Samuel Johnson on Law and the Lawyers. ture was used in ancient Rome, — the rack, leader, balls, barbed hooks; in England, the rack, the scavenger's daughter, the iron gauntlets, the cell " little ease," even in Elizabeth's days. In Scotland, the rack, the thumb-screw, pilniewinkie, the boot, the cashielaws, the long vines, the narrow bore. Spain, France, Italy, all had their peculiar
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and national modes. The ingenuity of man was exercised to the utmost to find new modes of torturing his fellow. One writer enumerates no less than six hundred different instruments invented for this fell purpose. Throughout civilized Europe Justice blinded her eyes to the writhings, and shut her ears to the groaning of her victims.
SAMUEL JOHNSON ON LAW AND THE LAWYERS. IT has been said, says the " Law Times," that few books contain so many " good advices " as Hoswell's " Life of Johnson " — a circumstance that doubtless gives the rea son for the notice that Johnson still pro cures, and from no one more than barristers of " light and leading," in the courts. In his lifetime, Johnson may have supposed that he would obtain an unconscious forensic canonization from leading barristers in chan cery, for it is certain that references to law and lawyers abound in Boswell's pages. One may be pardoned for quoting Johnson's short prayer before the Study of the Law, which, as Boswell says, is " truly admirable " : "Almighty God, the giver of wisdom, with out whose help resolutions are vain, without whose blessing study is ineffectual; enable me, if it be thy will, to attain such knowledge as may qualify me to direct the doubtful and instruct the ignorant, to prevent wrongs and terminate contentions, and grant I may use that knowledge which I shall attain to thy glory and my own salvation, for Jesus Christ's sake." It is perhaps a somewhat melancholy illus tration of Johnson's own saying as to the frailty of intention, that, after having contem plated a forensic course in so truly an admir able spirit, he should never have had the resolution to engage in it. It is more singu lar that Johnson should never have become a lawyer, since, to parody a phrase of Junius,
some people are bigoted in politics who are infidels in religion. Johnson was almost a bigot in law. There he freely avowed on one oc casion : " I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls." Of one statute at least Johnson had a singular appreciation; he declared, "The habeas cor pus is the single advantage which our govern ment has over that of other countries." On the subject of the judicial functions, Johnson expressed himself frequently and freely. On the subject of judicial malversation, Boswell relates the following : " Next day we talked of a book in which an eminent judge was ar raigned before the bar of the public as hav ing pronounced an unjust decision in a great cause. Dr. Johnson maintained that this publication would not give any uneasiness to the judge. ' For,' said he, 'either he acted honestly or he meant to do injustice. If he acted honestly, his own consciousness will protect him; if he meant to do injustice, he will be glad to see the man who attacks him so much vexed.'" Johnson made the following interesting observations on Lord Bute's establishing the judges in their places for life by Act of Par liament, instead of their losing them at the accession of a new king. Johnson said : "Lord Bute, I suppose, thought to make the king popular by his concession; but the people never minded it, and it was a most impolitic measure. There is no reason why
