Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/197

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CLERKS—DISCHARGED INSOLVENTS.
181

our complaint has abated considerably of late; and ought to be put down altogether.


PRETENDED LAWYERS,

or those who propose to transact your affairs by way of agency, calling themselves "Law Agents;" and "Accomptants" partake somewhat of the character of the Sycophants or useful men whom we described higher up These gentry are mostly clerks of pettifogging lawyers, who permit them to sue in their names for debts, real or imaginary, actions for damages, assaults, &c. They are at times such as have been in good clerkships, but now out of employment; and they constantly talk of the respectable concerns to which they once belonged: "this was always the practice at B. and A.'s, when I was there;" "We never failed to get the money by these means," says the pettifogger, in order to give his advice an air of consequence. A great proportion of them know no more of law than what they have learnt "Over the water," or at "No. 9, Fleet Market."[1] These are admirably fitted for "Agents" in the Debtors Court, under the

  1. The King's Bench and Fleet Prisons are thus quaintly described.