PRIVATE

17 June 1807

B 7

1 o

Letter V

II. Litigation

In so far as the civil i.e. non-criminal quarter of the field of law is concerned, the policy of Judge and C o may be comprehended by this general expression - promotion of wrongs and litigation: litigation for the sake of the lawyer's-profit of which it has been made the source; wrongs (in the present case civil wrongs) as being, in two of the three modes of litigation the sources of the litigation, and thence of its lawyers'-profit in a less immediate way; in the third mode, themselves the immediate source of that profit, litigation being the instrument employed at one and the same time for the working of the wrong, and the extraction of the profit: for the working of the wrong for the benefit of the outdoor partner, the malâ fide plaintiff and wrongdoer; for the extraction of the lawyers' profit, by and for the benefit of the indoor partners, Judge and C o.

Howsoever it may be regarded as a sort of metaphysical abstraction, it may however throw some light upon the subject to observe, that as it is only in virtue of the connection thus intimately established between wrongs and litigation, as well as between litigation and lawyers profit, that, under the fee-gathering system Judge and C o possess the interest they have in the promotion and multiplication of wrongs, it follows, that, were it at the same time true, and to their observation clear, that wrongs were not a source of litigation: insomuch that in that ideal state of things, no greater exertions of industry and genius would on their part be directed to the promotion of wrongs than to the prevention of them:- and so in regard to litigation.