But the _Epoch_ was more scathing still in its bombardment of the system of judicature, and the legal ministers thereof. It began with the House of Lords as a legal tribunal--” the gilded asylum in which judicial patients suffering from the incurable disease of old age delivered very occasional judgments in exchange for princely salaries and exalted rank.” The Royal Courts of Justice were characterised as a gigantic honeycomb in which clerkly drones got as much as they could for doing as little as possible; a mighty mill in which the machinery stood still during vacations which lasted about a third of the working year; a vast temple in which the servers were ever engaged in piling fuel on the altars of precedent and practice. Then the writer, or writers, went on to deal with the legal practitioners, whom he or they described as “Locusts of the Law”; but here, again, there was no condemnation for the honest rank and file--the barristers in their chambers and the solicitors in their offices, who were fair and square in their dealings, and manfully struggled to keep their footing under almost impossible conditions. But for the brilliant leaders of the Bar--the advocates who walked in silk attire and siller had to spare--there was no gentleness. “Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” For them, said the _Epoch_, the whole pretentious fabric of our legal system was maintained; for their advantage the monstrous delusion of honorary services; for their immunity the supposed dissociation of forensic labour from forensic fees; and the helpless position of suitors whose causes they mismanaged or neglected. Contempt was poured on the “representative bodies” which misrepresented the forensic profession--the General Council of the Bar, with its policy of tithe, mint, and cumin, and its neglect of the weightier matters of the law; the Benchers, with their limpet-like clinging to ancient funds and obsolete traditions; the circuit messes, with their petty jealousies and selfish trade-unionism.