Mr. Chamberlain made a very amusing and a rather Conser-
vative speech yesterday week, at the annual dinner of the Bir- mingham Law Students' Society. Its Conservatism consisted in his panegyric on the general fairness and trustworthiness of the decisions of "the Great Unpaid" in Quarter-Sessions and Petty Sessions ; its amnsingness, in the delicacy with which he defended the Attorneys-at-Law against the gibes of Dr. Johnson and the many libels of our dramatic fiction. " I -do not know, gentlemen," said Mr. Chamberlain, "whether you are aware that one-half of the world tried to do without you altogether,—nnsuccessfully, I need not say ; but when Spain first colonised America, there came from -every one of the • new settlements petitions to the mother. -country begging that no lawyers should be allowed to go out, because, as these petitioners observed, the colonists desired to perpetuate themselves and to live in peace, whereas by the malice of men and the introduction of scriveners, the prosperity of those regions would be jeopardised. In spite of the most stringent prohibitions, lawyers have not been wanting in the
New World I mention this historic incident only to prove, what to most of you is a well-known fact, that lawyers are an indispensable adjunct of civilisation." It was certainly a sanguine notion that law could be adequately elaborated, and yet- lawyers done away with. It would be even less sanguine. to hope for the full help of mechanics, and yet to dispense with .all professional mechanicians.
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