Excerpt from The Life of George Combe, Author of the Constitution of Man, Vol. 2 of 2 But he insinuates that the morale of the attorney is inferior to that of the barrister, and to this I demur. In Scotland, writers to the signet are employed in various branches. Some act chiefly as agents in litigations. These are the men with whom the barristers come chiefly into contact; and as litigation is a warfare in which victory is contended for at all hazards, within the limits of the rules prescribed by the law and by the forms of court, it is naturally to be supposed that the most adroit, energetic, and able com batant will be preferred by those who need to hire a champion. The writers to the signet, whose chief occupation lies in con ducting litigations, are men whose natural qualities fit them for this duty; and while some of them acknowledge the obliga tion of natural morality in their mode of conducting their cases, and preserve their individual character as gentlemen, there are others who acknowledge no law, human or divine. But the law of Scotland, and even this only in so far as it presents an obstacle to the attainment of the objects of their clients which they can neither evade by subtlety nor subvert by falsehood. This latter division in my day was small, not comprehending more than five or six individuals of the whole profession, and they were well known. They used to be designated as agents, ' in contradistinction to gentle men. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.