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LAW AND LAWYERS. The subjoined is the communication to which we alluded in the 'Gossip' of our last number. While we commend it to the attention of our readers, we would also respectfully invite them to include in its perusal the few remarks which we have ventured to append to the observations of our candid and courteous correspondent.

DEAR MR. EDITOR: I have been a constant reader of your Magazine for these twelve long years, and always with pleasure and profit to myself. I believe it would be difficult to find in the Republic of Letters a more useful and entertaining periodical, or one more creditable to the literary taste of a people, than our own KNICKERBOCKER. I am especially pleased with your Editor's Table,' that olla podrida of wit and humor, pathos and serious reflection. Pardon, however the familiarity of an old friend in saying, that so interesting a portion of your Magazine ought not to appear in such diminutive type: you should surely give these lucubrations of yours a better dress.

But it is not to complain of typography that I now address you; a weightier subject occupies my thoughts. In the last number of the KNICKERBOCKER, in a by-corner of the aforesaid Editor's Table,' there are some severe, I had almost written unkind remarks upon the character and tendencies of the legal profession, of which, dear Mr. EDITOR, I account myself an humble member. I think you have erred greatly in your hasty judgment upon us, and I wish I had time to convince you, as I am sure I could, that the too prevalent custom of underrating a liberal and most useful profession has no better foundation for its support than an idle and unworthy prejudice.

I am at a loss to conjecture who may have been the able jurist of whom you speak as having given so satisfactory an answer to your question. Were it not for the improbability of the thing, I should almost be inclined to think that this venerable limb of the law,' be he who he may, was indulging himself in a joke at the expense of even so distinguished a personage as the Editor of our KNICKERBOCKER. If so, it were presumptuous indeed; but for his sake, don't condemn us all. You must admit with me, that the law is, and always must be, a science. Simplify it as much as may be, cut off all the inconsistent and unnatural excrescences which have been suffered to disfigure the noble trunk, and yet so long as there are recognized principles of right and wrong - too often alas! not so easily discernible as they should be - so long as the rules of right reasoning are acknowledged and respected; so long as the selfish instincts and the restless passions of our nature remain unchanged; the law must be of paramount importance. The sphere of its action is as diversified as the pursuits of human life; and there can be no conceivable relation of men with each other, which the law deems unworthy of its care. It emphatically comes home to men's business and bosoms; it throws around all its unseen protection; it is the common arbiter, which in exchanging a state of nature for society, we have chosen as the defender of our rights, the avenger of our wrongs. That society must be simple indeed in its structure, and have made but little advance in civilization, in which the law does

not exist, to some extent at least, as a science; and there is perhaps no better test of the progress made by a people in the improvement of their social condition, than the respect and obedience which are paid by them to the law, and the consideration with which its ministers and expounders are treated.

Because in some instances the law has been made an instrument of oppression and tyranny, let us not condemn it for such unworthy prostitution of its high functions; let us rather think in how many cases it has thrown its shield over the helpless; how often it has unmasked and frustrated the villain, and interposed its strong arm for the protection of society. HERRICK, an old poet of the time of CHARLES the First, says in some quaint rough verses:

'LAW is to give to every man his own,

To shove the feeble up against the strong,

To shield the stranger and the poor from wrong;
This was the founder's grave and good intent

To keep the outcast in his tenement,

To free the orphan from that wolf-like man
Who is his butcher, more than guardian;

To dry the widow's tears, and stop her swoons,

By pouring balm and oil into her wounds.'

Such were the sentiments of an old cavalier in days long past, when the abuses of the law must have been far greater than at the present time; and I think probably you will say from prejudice that they are to a great extent applicable now; at any rate, it must be admitted that there is no profession or class of citizens whose services are more essential and necessary to the well-being of society than the lawyers.

But, Mr. EDITOR, you charge us with the employment of technical terms for the purpose of making the law an occult science. This I take to be the most serious of your accusations. It would be a folly indeed to deny that there are many technicalities in daily use in the legal profession, and that many words are employed by us in a peculiar sense, and with meanings different from those understood in ordinary parlance; but I conceive this to be unavoidable: at any rate, I am sure it cannot be attributed to so profound a motive as the desire of excluding the commune vulgus' from all participation in the mysteries of the science. All trades and occupations have in a greater or less degree their peculiar and technical phrases and expressions. Is it probable that the exact and beautiful nomenclature of the chemist was invented for no other purpose than to deter the mass of mankind from a knowledge of the researches and discoveries of so interesting a science? You yourself, Mr. EDITOR, have doubtless at some time or other in your life had occasion to get a house built; let me ask you if you ever met with a more puzzling jargon of unintelligible words than the specifications of your carpenter and mason? Go into the merchant's countinghouse, and what definite idea can you acquire of the nature of his business? In what degree are you familiar with the abstruse science of book-keeping in the high and solemn department of 'Double Entry? What precise idea is conveyed to your mind, (supposing you detest figures,) in the lofty phrase 'Cash Dr. to Bills Receivable,' or 'Sundries Dr. to Profit and Loss?' Confess to me, Mr. EDITOR, that these are indeed profound mysteries; and yet the use of such technical expressions is confined to no particular class or description of persons. Indeed, I might give you a thousand instances; but one will suffice. I will wager you any amount of money, that in your own printing-office there are more technical words in use than in the whole body of the law; and yet you will hardly say that this is owing to a far-sighted apprehension, on the part of the printer, that if such words were not so employed, the trade would be overdone. Remember, dear Sir, that language is finite, and that words must be used in more senses than one, or else the labor of a life would be required to master one's own vernacular.

You complain too of the tautological diffusiveness of our papers, and to a certain extent with reason; but if I had not already taken up so much of your time, I would show you that to draw a legal instrument or pleading, is a very different thing from letting one's pen run over the paper with all the unrestrained freedom of ordinary writing. The canons of

taste are not like the rules of law. When you sit down, dear Mr. EDITOR, to your labor of love, you are not made nervous by the thought that you must stand or fall by the record, and that the case to be made must be relied upon without alteration; that argument and inference cannot be indulged in; and that precision and certainty are necessary above all things. These are matters which make the lawyer nervous; and if he errs in too much amplification, it is because he feels acutely the truth of old HORACE's maxim:

'Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.'

Will you accept these hasty remarks as an answer to your charges upon our profession, and forgive an old lawyer for venturing to trouble you with this imperfect paper, which has been written in an hour stolen from engrossing business? If you are not convinced, you will I am sure at least look not unkindly upon this attempt to defend our noble science from an imputation which is conceived to be unjust.

HN.

THUS far our excellent correspondent. We have a word to say however touching certain portions of his communication. Let us premise, that the distinguished jurist' to whom we alluded in our October number is a man whose mere professional ipse-dirit we have reason to believe would be considered law with our correspondent, without hesitation or gainsaying. Our friend seems to consider the use of tautological terms as unavoidable; and he sets forth the nervousness of a lawyer, in drawing a legal instrument, lest he should fail in getting it right; but this nervousness may sometimes arise from a cause less creditable to the learned gentleman.' Many years ago there appeared in the Westminster Review a searching exposé of the absurd and adscititious legal amplifications which are common to the law-pleadings of England. Now it is well known, even to the uninitiated—since every time we toast an Englishman at a public dinner the fact is dwelt upon with great unction—that English law is American law;' and in most of its ridiculous forms and wordy verbiage, it is essentially so, our revised statutes to the contrary notwithstanding. Let us glance for a moment then at some of the absurdities to which we had allusion in our former remarks. Our English reviewer contends, and he establishes his position by a multitude of irrefragible proofs, that legal practitioners have an interest in prolixity; that in their pleadings they indulge in the most useless amplifications, and insert the most ridiculous falsehoods, unnecessary to their clients, merely in order to charge for them. The reviewer begins by remarking that the rationale of common law seems capable of being comprised in a very few simple rules, the most important of which is, that the allegations of litigant parties should consist of nothing more than simple statements of fact, and simple and specific denials of facts pleaded by the other party; the facts pleaded being accompanied with the circumstances of time, place, etc., necessary to fix their identity, and by no others whatsoever. The parties should make no allegation in pleading which they do not believe to be true. A complainant cannot but know how he considers himself to have acquired the right which he claims, and the defendant must equally know what he considers to render the claim of the complainant invalid. This slender stock of knowledge, under a simplified mode of pleading, would be amply sufficient. Little art is required to enable men to tell the truth; art becomes requisite chiefly when men are about to plead falsehood. The reviewer takes up that bundle of redundance, prolixity and falsehood, which is called a ‘declaration,' and exposes the 'mendacity-license' under which it is drawn up. So wordy and confused is this instrument, in even a simple action of debt, that it is customary to call upon the plaintiff to furnish the defendant with a bill of particulars,' specifying what disinterested common sense would have specified in the declaration, which it supersedes; but then there would be no long counts' to charge for by the folio; counts differing only in the statement of the mode in which the debt was incurred. Look for example at a declaration in an action for the value of any personal property whatsoever, which a person to whom it does not legally belong has converted to his own use, or refuses to give up to the

owner.

In whatever manner the defendant may have become possessed of this property, this sort of declaration always states that the plaintiff casually lost, and the defendant casually found, the goods in question. In an action for the value of two waggons, ten horses, and an hundred head of cattle, the cause of action' would be stated something like this in the declaration: For that whereas the said plaintiff, being possessed of certain cattle, goods and chattels, to wit, twenty waggons, twenty carts, twenty carriages, one hundred horses, one hundred mares, one hundred geldings, one thousand bulls, one thousand cows, one thousand oxen, one thousand heifers, casually lost' (as it were out of his pocket!) 'the said cattle, goods and chattels, and the same came into the possession of the said defendant casually by finding! Take the case of a debt not due by virtue of a deed; an action, for instance, to recover compensation for loss occasioned by negligence. A horse is sent to a blacksmith to be shod; in shoeing, the animal is accidentally lamed by the blacksmith's man: no promise has been made, nor was the injury done, intentional; yet the owner would, in the kind of declaration most usually employed in an action for compensation, be made to allege, that in consideration of certain reasonable reward,' the blacksmith undertook and faithfully promised to shoe the said horse in a skilful, careful, and proper manner; but not regarding his said several promises and undertakings, but contriving and fraudulently intending craftily and subtilly to deceive and defraud the plaintiff in this behalf, he wholly neglected so to do,' etc. Absurd and mendacious, however, as these 'declarations' are, they are veracious and simple compared with that in 'ejectment.' In this instrument, not only every fact stated, but also the names of the parties, and literally every word, is false: the declaration, for example, is framed as against a fictitious defendant at the suit of a fictitious plaintiff; and in an ejectment for one house and garden, it directs RICHARD ROE to answer JOHN DOE wherefore he, the said RICHARD ROE, with force and arms entered into five messuages, five stables, five coach-houses, five yards, and five gardens, situate lying and being' in such or such a place! And at the foot of this declaration is written a pretended note from the fictitious defendant, RICHARD ROE, to the tenant in actual possession, who is the real defendant, advising him to appear in court and be made defendant, otherwise he (the legal 'PETER FUNK!) will suffer judgment to be entered against himself by default! The service of a copy of this tissue of nonsense upon the tenant in possession results in another cluster of lies, which the tenant is obliged to tell, before the court will permit him to defend the action. In a 'notice to appear,' a defendant is informed that he is running up and down the country and secreting himself' with a vagabond of the name of ROE. He is ordered to appear' on a certain day in court and plead to the charge; but the appearance itself is fictitious. If he were to appear and persist in pleading, as ordered, he would probably be committed to prison for the gross contempt he had evinced for the court, by obeying its commands! The true purport of the notice is, that the defendant is to pay certain fees, and give bail for securing his obedience to the decision of the court; and in finding this security, he is often permitted to avail himself of the friendly assistance of Messrs. JOHN DOE and RICHARD ROE. Some idea of a declara. tion in an action for assault and battery may be derived from the following lines:

VOL. XXIV.

'THE pleadings state that JOHN-a-Gull,

With envy, wrath, and malice full,

With swords, knives, sticks, staves, fist and bludgeon,

Beat, bruised, and wounded JOHN-A-GUDGEON.

First counts: For that, with divers jugs,

To wit, twelve pots, twelve cups, twelve mugs,

Of certain vulgar drink called toddy,

Said GULL did sluice said GUDGEON'S body;

To wit, his gold-laced hat and hair on,

And clothes which he had then and there on;
To wit, twelve jackets, twelve surtouts,
Twelve pantaloons, twelve pairs of boots,
Which did thereby much discompose

Said GUDGEON's mouth, eyes, ears and nose,
Back, belly, neck, thighs, feet and toes;
By which, and other wrongs unheard of,
His clothes were spoiled and life despaired of.'

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That redundance and tautology are the besetting defects of legal contracts' between man and man, is we believe generally acknowledged. Our friend Mayor HARPER, who does not lack a certain shrewd common sense, but who, like Necessity, 'knows no law,' illustrates this by a little anecdote. His firm were about publishing a work by a popular writer. A brother of the author waits upon JAMES, with a contract filling three or four manuscript pages, setting forth, that, 'Whereas, on this blank day of blank, in the city of New-York, to wit, the parties of the first part, in consideration of,' and so forth, bind themselves, their heirs and assigns, to and with the party of the second part, to perform the obligations hereinafter more particularly described and set forth,' et cetera. Our Mayor-publisher wiped his 'specs,' looked at the document a moment, and stepping to the desk, wrote on a piece of paper, We agree to give - twenty-five cents for each copy sold of any editions which we may hereafter publish of the book entitled So-and-so.' The time of payment was specified; and these four or five lines, being dated, and signed by the firm, were as binding, and as 'good in law' to all parties, as the long and half-unintelligible document for which it was substituted. But ‘enough said' — perhaps too much.

GOSSIP WITH KEADERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.-It may not be amiss to mention, although the intelligence can hardly be new to many of our readers, that there was lately held a "Lection,' for the purpose of obtaining a President and Vice-President of this Free and Enlightened Republic.' Several 'returns' have already come in; and it was recently stated in a morning paper' that probability seemed to favor the conclusion that Hon. JAMES K. POLK, of Tennessee, and Hon. GEORGE M. DALLAS, of Pennsylvania, had been chosen to rule over us for the next four years, and that the gallant HENRY CLAY, beloved of so many warm American hearts, had been defeated. Not having been contradicted to our knowledge in any evening paper,' this report we incline to consider well-founded. Still, we think the country is safe.' We have seen it on the verge of annihilation several times; and once it was not expected to survive but a very short time after the election. This is not the second advent of political Millerism that we have seen, by four or five; yet somehow or other, the country has always gone on pretty much as was usual, even after all the States had been heard from, let the result be as it might. Well,' said a querulous Democrat, as he entered our barber's-shop the next day after the election of the late President HARRISON, well, you've got the 'lection; now where's the better times you promised us? Where's the 'bundance of money? Where's the market for every thing, and where 's the two dollars a-day and the roast beef? This querist was a little unreasonable in his anticipations, certainly; but not more so perhaps than a good Whig, who in the same place, the day after Mr. POLK's election was deemed settled, 'lifted up his voice and said:' 'Now you'll see! You'll see now what they've done! Now the hats and coats and umbrellas will come pourin'in from England! Now the shovels, andirons and brass-kettles will come pourin' in upon our shores! No protection to our mechanics; no markets for our work; no gettin' along; no nothing!' Hope all things,' gentlemen politicians of all parties, that are good, concerning our noble country! The future, let the disaffected believe, like the 'times' that have passed, will confirm no auguries of serious evil. Rulers are amenable to the Ruled, by whom they are closely watched. Our glorious Republic, with her free institutions, will be spared amid all the strifes and turmoils of parties; for the combatants themselves love her in their hearts. In lands less favored, Freedom has sometimes been murdered without the mark of blood. Assassins have hid themselves in the covering of the Constitution, and in her own colors, and in her name, planted the dagger.' In America, the love of a republican government,, and the sleepless vigilance of the people, will forever avert a calamity so fearful. But we may seem didactic; and to avoid the imputation of affecting the gymnastics of rhetoric, we will pause; simply adding, that for ourselves indivi