"There--I told you so, Colonel Mannering!--Well, sir, if you must needs be a fool, the business is to give you the luxury of a lawsuit at the least possible expense, and to bring you off conqueror if possible. Let Mr. Protocol send me your papers, and I will advise him how to conduct your cause. I don't see, after all, why you should not have your lawsuits too, and your feuds in the Court of Session, as well as your forefathers had their manslaughters and fire-raisings."
"Very natural, to be sure, sir. We wad just take the auld gate as readily, if it werena for the law. And as the law binds us, the law should loose us. Besides, a, man's aye the better thought o' in out country for having been afore the Feifteen."
"Excellently argued, my friend! Away with you, and send your papers to me.--Come, Colonel, we have no more to do here."
"God, we'll ding [*Defeat] Jock o' Dawston Cleugh now after a'!" said Dinmont, slapping his thigh in great exultation.
--I am going to the parliament;
You understand this bag: If you have any business Depending there, be short, and let me hear it, And pay your fees. Little French Lawyer.
"SHALL you be able to carry this honest fellow's cause for him?" said Mannering.
"Why, I don't know; the battle is not to the strong, but he shall come off triumphant over Jock of Dawston if we can make it out. I owe him something. It is the pest of our profession that we seldom see the best side of human nature. People come to us with every selfish feeling newly pointed and grinded; they turn down the very caulkers of their animosities and prejudices, as smiths do with horses' shoes in a white frost. Many a man has come to my garret Yonder, that I have at first longed to pitch out at the window, and yet, at length, have discovered that he was only doing as I might have done in his case, being very angry, and, of course, very unreasonable. I have now satisfied myself, that if our profession sees more of human folly and human roguery than others, it is because we witness them acting in that channel in which they can most freely vent themselves. In civilised society, law is the chimney through which all that smoke discharges itself that used to circulate through the whole house, and put every one's eyes out--no wonder, therefore, that the vent itself should sometimes get a little sooty. But we will take care our Liddesdale-man's cause is well conducted and well argued, so all unnecessary expense will be saved--he shall have his pineapple at wholesale price."
