The Anatomy of Melancholy

It is a general evil in our times, an unnoticed plague; never have there been so many of them. They “have now multiplied like locusts,” says Mat. Geraldus, himself a lawyer: “They are not the fathers of their country but its plagues, and mostly an arrogant, wicked, greedy, quarrelsome breed.” “A purse-milking nation,” and so on: a nation that milks purses, a noisy company, vultures in gowns, “who live on injustice and the blood of citizens”; thieves and breeding grounds of discord.

Worse than any roadside extortioners: hawks for gold, borers after gold, money-hooks, bounty-hunting informers, court-grabbers, courtroom bells, human monsters, fraudulent dealers, and so on. They profess to make peace but are the very disturbers of our peace: a company of irreligious Harpies, scraping, grasping bailiffs. I mean our ordinary hungry pettifoggers, “courtroom ranters”; meanwhile I love and honour all good laws and worthy lawyers, who are so many oracles and pilots of a well-governed commonwealth.

Without skill or judgement, they do more harm, as Livy said, “than foreign wars, famine, or disease”—than sickness, wars, hunger, diseases—and “bring almost unbelievable destruction upon a commonwealth,” says Seyssel, a celebrated civil lawyer formerly in Paris. Just as ivy embraces an oak until it has eaten out its heart, so they treat the places where they live. No advice, no justice, no speech is to be had “unless you have first soothed him”: he must constantly be paid, or he is as mute as a fish. You would do better opening an oyster without a knife.

“Believe one who knows,” says John of Salisbury. “I have fallen into their hands a thousand times, and harsh Charon, who never spared anyone, is far more merciful than they.” I speak from experience: I have been among them a thousand times, and Charon himself is gentler than they are. He is content with his single payment, but they keep multiplying theirs; they are never satisfied.

Besides, they have “harmful tongues,” as he calls them, “unless you bind them with silver cords”: they must be paid to say nothing, and receive more for keeping quiet than we can for saying our best. They speak pleasantly to their clients and invite them to dine; but, as he goes on to say, “Of all injustice, none is so pernicious as that of people who strive to appear honest precisely when they are most deceitful.”

They profess to be peacemakers and “to support the cases of the lowly,” helping them obtain their rights; “they champion the afflicted.” But it is all for their own advantage, “to empty the purses of the wealthier.” They plead for poor people without charge, but use them only as decoys to catch others.