Several
Of Them Have Of Late Years Been Advanced To The Peerage; As Finch,
Somers, Cowper, Harcourt, Trevor, Parker, Lechmere, King, Raymond,
&C., Scarce Any Of Them Much Exceeding Forty Years Of Age When They
Arrived At That Honour.
The fees are so great, and their business so engrosses every minute
of their time, that it is impossible
Their expenses should equal
their income; but it must be confessed they labour very hard, are
forced to be up early and late, and to try their constitutions to
the utmost (I mean those in full business) in the service of their
clients. They rise in winter long before it is light, to read over
their briefs; dress, and prepare themselves for the business of the
day; at eight or nine they go to Westminster, where they attend and
plead either in the Courts of Equity or Common Law, ordinarily till
one or two, and (upon a great trial) sometimes till the evening. By
that time they have got home, and dined, they have other briefs to
peruse, and they are to attend the hearings, either at the Lord
Chancellor's or the Rolls, till eight or nine in the evening; after
which, when they return to their chambers, they are attended by
their clients, and have their several cases and briefs to read over
and consider that evening, or the next morning before daylight;
insomuch that they have scarce time for their meals, or their
natural rest, particularly at the latter end of a term. They are
not always in this hurry; indeed, if they were, the best
constitution must soon be worn out; nor would anyone submit to such
hardships who had a subsistence, but with a prospect of acquiring a
great estate suddenly; for the gold comes tumbling into the pockets
of these great lawyers, which makes them refuse no cause, how
intricate or doubtful soever. And this brings me to consider the
high fees that are usually taken by an eminent counsel; as for a
single opinion upon a case, two, three, four, and five guineas; upon
a hearing, five or ten; and perhaps a great many more; and if the
cause does not come on till the next day, they are all to be fee'd
again, though there are not less than six or seven counsel of a
side.
The next considerable profession therefore I shall mention in London
is that of the physicians, who are not so numerous as the former;
but those who are eminent amongst them acquire estates equal to the
lawyers, though they seldom arrive at the like honours. It is a
useful observation, indeed, as to English physicians, that they
seldom get their bread till they have no teeth to eat it: though,
when they have acquired a reputation, they are as much followed as
the great lawyers; they take care, however, not to be so much
fatigued. You find them at Batson's or Child's Coffee House usually
in the morning, and they visit their patients in the afternoon.
Those that are men of figure amongst them will not rise out of their
beds or break their rest on every call. The greatest fatigue they
undergo is the going up forty or fifty pair of stairs every day; for
the patient is generally laid pretty near the garret, that he may
not be disturbed.
These physicians are allowed to be men of skill in their profession,
and well versed in other parts of learning. The great grievance
here (as in the law) is that the inferior people are undone by the
exorbitance of their fees; and what is still a greater hardship is,
that if a physician has been employed, he must be continued, however
unable the patient is to bear the expense, as no apothecary may
administer anything to the sick man, if he has been prescribed to
first by a physician: so that the patient is reduced to this
dilemma, either to die of the disease, or starve his family, if his
sickness happens to be of any duration. A physician here scorns to
touch any other metal but gold, and the surgeons are still more
unreasonable; and this may be one reason why the people of this city
have so often recourse to quacks, for they are cheap and easily come
at, and the mob are not judges of their ability; they pretend to
great things; they have cured princes, and persons of the first
quality, as they pretend; and it must be confessed their patients
are as credulous as they can desire, taken with grand pretences, and
the assurance of the impostor, and frequently like things the better
that are offered them out of the common road.
I come in the next place to treat of attorneys' clerks, apprentices,
inferior tradesmen, coachmen, porters, servants, and the lowest
class of men in this town, which are far the most numerous: and
first of the lawyers' clerks and apprentices, I find it a general
complaint that they are under no manner of government; before their
times are half out, they set up for gentlemen; they dress, they
drink, they game, frequent the playhouses, and intrigue with the
women; and it is no uncommon thing with clerks to bully their
masters, and desert their service for whole days and nights whenever
they see fit.
As to the ordinary tradesmen, they live by buying and selling; I
cannot say they are so eminent for their probity as the merchants
and tradesmen of the first rate; they seem to have a wrong bias
given them in their education; many of them have no principles of
honour, no other rule to go by than the fishmonger, namely, to get
what they can, who consider only the weakness or ignorance of the
customer, and make their demands accordingly, taking sometimes half
the price they ask. And I must not forget the numbers of poor
creatures who live and maintain their families by buying provisions
in one part of the town, and retailing them in another, whose stock
perhaps does not amount to more than forty or fifty shillings, and
part of this they take up (many of them) on their clothes at a
pawnbroker's on a Monday morning, which they make shift to redeem on
a Saturday night, that they may appear in a proper habit at their
parish-churches on a Sunday.
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