Briefless

Consequently a briefless barrister who is totally without connexion, as it is delicately phrased, which means who has no attorney blood in him, who has not married an attorney's daughter, and who has no rich relations who bring grist to the attorney mill, cannot hope by any change of administration to become a briefed barrister.

As an advocate he had no success, for after walking the floor of the Parliament House, as it is called in Edinburgh, along with other briefed and briefless advocates, and securing only one case, which brought him four guineas, he abandoned that practice and settled down seriously to his true life work of literature.

No one can accuse the Unionist Party of seeking to make indecent capital out of the folly, the misfortunes and the scandals which have become the chief stock-in-trade of latter-day Radicalism since the great historic Party fell under the auspices of barristers— briefed and briefless.