He might have been Lord Chancellor, with a comfortable
seat on the Woolsack and L10,000 a year, and he chose instead to sit in the
House of Commons every day to be the target of every disappointed placeman.
Ah, you say, but look at the glory. Well, look at it. I would, as Danton
said, rather keep sheep on the hillside than meddle with the government of
men. It is the most ungrateful calling on earth. And, whatever other
defects may be attributed to Mr. Asquith, a passion for such an empty thing
as glory is not one of them. You will discover more passion for glory in
Mr. Churchill in five minutes than you will discover in Mr. Asquith in five
years. And Mr. Churchill is not a lawyer.
But this dislike of lawyers in the abstract has a certain basis. It is an
old dislike. You remember that remark of Johnson's when he was asked on a
certain occasion who was the man who had left the room: "I don't like
saying unpleasant things about a man behind his back; _but I believe he is
an attorney."_ And Carlyle was not much more civil when he described a
barrister as "a loaded blunderbuss "--if you bought him he blew your
opponent's brains out; if your opponent bought him he blew yours out.
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