In the spirit oe weber 245 the real power and influence that lawyers might exert over their clients. As Blackstone warned, the gentlemen of England were insufficiently educated in the laws of the land and often were unable to supervise the activities of their agents.What was true in Blackstone’s time was also apt in Pollock’s: “It has often been said that in no country are landowners so ignorant of their legal position or so dependent upon legal advice as in England ... Those who make the shoe do not feel it pinch and those who feel it pinch do not know how shoes are made.”'-' TheJuxtaposition of the ‘Rational’ and ‘Irrational’ in English Law, State and Society In sum, the existence of all these irrational features (or, more accurately, this complex symbiosis of the rational and irrational) until so late in the nineteenth century (indeed, many are still alive and well) undercuts the extent to which law and state in England can be said to have conformed to the criteria which Weber and other social theorists as well as historians, have argued were inherent in and characteristic of modern law, state and society. The peculiarities of the law are “... genuinely indicative of a pre-modern non-Weberian conceptual mode, which lack at least an element of the modern notions of merit, individual responsibility, and organizational rationale ... In a word [they were irrational] (in Weber’s sense of rationality); there is a dreamlike or nightmarish quality which pervaded the systemand which I think, must be appreciated by ... lawyers, historians and social theorists. Indeed, to what extent does this irrationality permeate other spheres of English life? Again, I can offer little more than a thumbnail sketch. I have already stressed the tenacity of “Old Corruption” in law. Rubenstein shows how it permeated many cither spheres of public life until at least the 1850’s and 1860’s.'-^ Haig’s recent history of the Victorian clergy details the incredible Blackstonc, op. cit., p. 4. F. Pollock, The L.ind L.iws, (London: Stevens, 1883), p. 4. Sec, also, English and Saville, op. cit. p. 42. This may be an area where English culture differs markedly fromthat of the United States. On the centrality of lawyers and the discourse of the law' in American life, see the celebrated discussion of de Tocqueville: A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (1835), pp. 227-31, 510-11. There is excellent w'ork on the history of American lawyers which (by implication) highlights the contrast between them and their English counterparts. See, for example. J. W. Hurst, The Growth of American Law: the Law-Makers, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950); and A. S. Konfesky and A. J. King (eds.). The Papers of Daniel Webster, 2 vols., (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1982-1983). The links between American lawyers and civic humanism (a fruitful area of comparison) is explored in R.W. Gordon’s important study. Lawyers of the Republic, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming). '-- Rubinstein, op. cit., p. 56. Rubinstein, op. cit., passim. 17
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=