George Eliot on “Going to Law”

The notion of the honest lawyer seems to have beena stranger to the 19th-century English novel.  Here is howGeorge Eliot describes the prospects of a law suit in The Mill on the Floss:

 Mr. Tulliver was a strictly honest man, andproud of being honest, but he considered that in law the ends of justicecould only be achieved by employing a stronger knave to frustrate aweaker. Law was a sort of cock-fight, in which it was the business of injuredhonesty to get a game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs.

. . .

“I hope and pray he won’t go to law,”said Mrs. Moss, “for there’s never any knowing where that’ll end. Andthe right doesn’t allays win.  This Mr. Pivart’s a rich man, by what I canmake out, and the rich mostly get things their own way.”

[Jeremy Telman]