I often feel that if that excellent patriarch Job had been alive he would have sent me a postcard indited, "O that ye would altogether hold your peace and it should be your wisdom." I have an anonymous friend who sends me frank criticisms of that kind on postcards. The sentiments are the same as Job's text, but the language is fruitier. Nevertheless, I like to hear from him, for he is an attentive reader of all I write. But, honestly, although I was always sorry for Job and glad when he came into his camels and donkeys in the last chapter, yet I never sympathised with his attitude of taking his troubles lying down. After all, if one has gained a little practical experience of the law and the poor by living and working with them for twenty years it seems a pity to take it with you across the ferry into the silence merely because you have a bashful and retiring disposition. It is right, of course, to give your views and services to Select Commissions and the like,--but that is no better than hiding a lump of gold in a hole in the ground. The wiser plan is to try and tell the law-makers of the future--the men in the street--what is wrong with the machine, so that when they take it over, as they must do some day, they will not scrap it in mere despair, but tune it up to a faster and nobler rhythm. Job, great, good, patient soul that he was, had his sour moments--a medical friend of mine believes that he had a liver,--I am sorry not to take the patriarch's advice, but I do not see my way to hold my peace about the law and the poor, and that is why I propose to try and point out how and why the law as a system is hard on the poor, and wherein the governors and great ones of the earth may further temper the wind to the shorn lamb. I myself do not expect to enter into the promised land of legal reform, but I am as sure that the younger generation will see it, as I am sure that they will see the rising sun if they ever get up early enough. The man at the door of the booth who beats the drum and calls out to the young folk in the fair to walk up and see the show plays a helpful part, though the old gentleman knows that he is doomed to stand outside and never make one of the audience. Moses was like that, but he did useful work in booming the promised land.