S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.
Lord Eldon
When I first went the Northern Circuit, I employed my time, having no business of my own, in attending to the manner in which the leading counsel did their business. I left Lancaster at the end of a circuit, with my friend Jack Lee, at that period a leader upon the circuit. We supped and slept at Kirby Lonsdale, or Kitby Stephen. After supper I said to him, “I have observed that throughout circuit, in all causes in which you are concerned, good, bad, indifferent, whatever their nature was, you equally exerted yourself to the uttermost to gain verdicts, stating evidence and quoting cases as such statement and quotation should give you a chance of success, the evidence and the cases not being stated clearly, or quoted with a strict attention to accuracy and to fair and just representation. Can that,” said I, “Lee, be right? Can it be justified?” “Oh, yes,” he said, “undoubtedly. Dr. Johnson has said that counsel were at liberty to state, as the parties themselves would state, what it was most for their interest to state.” After some interval, and when he had had his evening bowl of milk punch and two or three pipes of tobacco, he suddenly said, “Come, Master Scott, let us go to bed. I have been thinking upon the question that you asked me, and I am not quite so sure that the conduct you represented will bring a man peace at the last.”