’ AT a meeting of the Society of Gentlemen Practisers in the Courts of Law and Equity, held on the 13th February, 1739, the Meeting unanimously declared its utmost abhorrence of all male [sic] and unfair practice, and that it would do its utmost to detect and discountenance the same. This is the first entry in the minute book of the society, and it seems to indicate that the society had not long been established. There is no information about the events leading up to its foundation. Like most professional bodies in England, it was voluntary in origin, and during the eighteenth century at least, it remained independent of external authority. The scope of existing regulations permitted it to put its first resolution into practice, without being specifically authorised to do so either by the judges or by parliament. For the rest, it was, like many others at this time, largely a convivial society, meeting twice a year to have a dinner, and to hear what the committee had been doing.

In retrospect, of course, the drawbacks of its independence are apparent, and even during the eighteenth century there were those who believed that such a society could not adequately control the profession.2 But its minutes show a record of activity perhaps surprising to those who believed the attorneys to be wholly devoid of public spirit, or to those who, like Bentham, thought it unrealistic to suppose that they would ever concern themselves with professional morality. So the history of the society is another important sign of the growing concern which some attorneys were feeling about the public status of their profession. And it does not necessarily detract from its achievement that it owed much of its impetus to the realisation of its members—the more affluent part of the profession practising in London—that ‘true self love and social’ might coincide. Completely disinterested reformers are rare, and are inclined to an idealism which too readily ignores the general temper of the age in which they live. The effectiveness of the work of this society and of others like it was due to the fact that they were swimming with an increasingly powerful tide.