Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/461

416 We have seen in the daily papers scores of lawyers' advertisements which are not altogether unlike the above. The better class of lawyers, however, as may be well understood, generally refrain from advertisement.

But to return to our original text. The chief thing which prevents the lawyers in America, at the present day, from representing the aristocracy of the country, is their close connection with the disreputable wirepullers and professional politicians. There is a large class of men in the United States who are politicians by profession; that is to say, they are vote-mongers, manipulators of majorities, and dispensers of patronage. And when it is recollected that at the present day in America all the appointments, judicial and otherwise, of every description and in every State are distributed amongst the members of the victorious party, it becomes evident that, as most of these "politicians" are lawyers, and as they are often rewarded by judicial appointments, some kind of degradation of the bench and the profession must necessarily follow. It speaks volumes for the integrity and capability of the American lawyers of to-day that they still occupy any social position at all. There are other reasons, too, which have tended to the corruption of the profession in America. The excessive worship of wealth, which taints the American character, must have induced the lawyers, like the traders and stock-jobbers, to make money by any means, fair or unfair, since money will whitewash the most spotted reputation; but it is to their connection with the trade of politics that the lawyers, in America, owe any loss of social reputation which they have experienced.—Pump Court.

STRANGE TENURES.

CURIOUS collection of tenures and services, selected with a special view to their singularity, has fallen into our hands, from which we may contrive to pick out much interesting matter. Its author is one "Thos. Blouse of the Inner Temple, Esquire," and the book is entitled "Antient Tenures of Land and Jocular Customs of Some Mannours, made publick for the diversion of some and the instruction of others." The book was printed in 1679, "for Abel Roper at the Sun; Thos. Basset at the George; and Christopher Wilkinson at the Black Boy; all in Fleet Street;" and it bears, moreover, the imprimatur of the celebrated Francis North, who, "well knowing the learning and industry of the author, doth allow the printing of this book." But to our extracts.

War, naturally enough in those days—and we are engaged almost exclusively with the first Plantagenet kings—formed the chief object of anxiety and service. The obligation to serve, either personally or by deputy, in the royal army, with horse and arms for forty days, whenever the sovereign chose to go to war, formed the customary tenure on which a knight's fee was held. The conditions were, however, often varied. Some tenants undertook to supply one or more foot-soldiers, armed with pikes, bills, or bows; or else furnished weapons,—two hundred arrows; so many bows without strings; sometimes, but more rarely, crossbows; and once or twice we find the condition laid down of providing the larger description of dart and stone-throwing engine, called a catapulta. In some cases, also, the military services were to be rendered wherever it pleased the king to carry on hostilities; in others, the tenant was bound to follow his Majesty only in his wars with Scotland or Wales. The barony of Burgh, on the Sands of Cumberland, and