We of the long robe of the Inns of Court have always held in theory that we were there to take on the protection of any and every suitor. Please do not think when your attorney asks you for counsel's fees that you are hiring him by that golden nexus of guineas. By no means. No barrister can stoop to take wages or salary. What you are giving him is a mere gratuity, "which a barrister cannot demand without doing wrong to his reputation." And, that being so, one might expect some of the wealthier Templars to take the ideal of their profession at its face value and set up to advise and plead for the poor not only without wronging their reputation by demanding a gratuity, but by refusing to accept one. In a recent case much was said of the noble attitude of Barrister A., who, being a political opponent of Barrister B., appeared for him when he had got into trouble--I use the phrase in no technical sense. Correspondence ensued, and some enthusiasts for the honour of the profession said that every barrister was bound to take up a case if it was offered him. I wonder what would happen if Lazarus went knocking at the doors of Crown Office Row and Pump Court with a claim against Dives, but without a gratuity in his hand? Would he get anyone to advise him on evidence or settle the indorsement on his writ? One never knows. The atmosphere of our Courts is not all that it should be. I do not refer to the physical fog which pervades them, the smells of which the electric fans blow about the building in the sacred name of ventilation, but the moral atmosphere of our Courts always seems to me to suggest that the law is an appanage of the rich. By all means let us have dignity, decorum, and distinctive dress, but if you go into the High Court, although you may hear the affairs of the poor dealt with sympathetically and in a just spirit, the atmosphere of the Court is well-to-do and prosperous. Everyone connected with the duties seems to belong to the upper middle class. There is no place at all for the working man to play his part except on occasion in the jury box. And then, if the claim is the claim of a poor man against a rich man, a special jury is empanelled and you get at a greater cost a tribunal of the defendant's own class to hold the scales of justice. And though I firmly believe that all do their best, and that speaking generally justice is well administered, yet I can quite understand the feeling of a poor man entering a Court of Justice and finding that the judge who lays down the law, the jury who decide the facts, the advocates who argue the case, and the solicitors who instruct the advocates are all drawn from a class of the community which the working man rightly or wrongly believes to be hostile to his outlook on life.