4553. LAWYERS, Too many.—
Law is quite overdone. It is fallen to the ground,
and a man must have great powers to raise
himself in it to either honor or profit. The
mob of the profession get as little money and
less respect, than they would by digging the
earth. The followers of Æsculapius are also
numerous. Yet I have remarked that wherever
one sets himself down in a good neighborhood,
not preoccupied, he secures to himself
its practice, and if prudent, is not long in
acquiring whereon to retire and live in comfort.
The physician is happy in the attachment
of the families in which he practices.
All think he has saved some one of them,
and he finds himself everywhere a welcome
guest, a home in every house. If, to the consciousness
of having saved some lives, he can
add that of having at no time, from want of
caution, destroyed the boon he was called on
to save, he will enjoy, in age, the happy reflection
of not having lived in vain; while
the lawyer has only to recollect how many, by
his dexterity, have been cheated of their right
and reduced to beggary.—
To David Campbell. Washington ed. v, 499.
(M.
1810)
