CONCERNING ENORMOUS FEES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1150, 18 September 1883, Page 3

CONCERNING ENORMOUS FEES.

Mr Benjamin, by far the ablest advocate in the most lucrative department of legal practice received £25,000 in his moat fortunate year—about half the yearly income many a secorid : rato architect or engineer or newspaper proprietor has made in the present century. The famous lawyer who has just ceased earning incomes that perhaps average £20,000 a-yoar since he took silk in 1872 would have been more liberally rewarded in Elizabeth’s England and quite as lavishly remunerated in Charles ll’s London. The bare statemerit of'the fee tells little of the lawyer’s remuneration. Though considerable fees are sometimes taken for little trouble, or no work at all, the sensationally magnificent fees of legal annals are always found on enquiry to have been payments for usually heavy and arduous services. If he had not won the respect of solicitors by his dexterous management of the defence, Edward Law would have had cause to regret his employment in behalf of Warren Hastings, who paid his loading counsel soiriething under £4OOO. On taking account of special outlay for the cause, and the value of the business it compelled him to decline. The eminent advocate who received a fee of £6,000 in the famous case of “ Small v. Attwood ” had reason to think himself under-paid and ill-paid. Serious payments for serious service, the big fees that now and then pass from clients,to counsel through the -fingers of intervening solicitors, differ widely frOrathe munificent prodigalities by • Which sick millionaires occasionally exhibit their fear of death and their gratitude to the doctor. Perhaps the largest fee ever paid to a medical man was the fee of 1,000 guineas, which Sir Henry Thompson received for a single visit—without any operation—to Oppenheim, the Cologne capitalist, who when already in extremis determined,To lure the famous London surgeon to his bedside at any dost; Of course such a, prodigious fee—demanded by the surgeon in the hope that the demand would be declined, and paid under altogether exceptional circumstances —is a solitary and strangely abnormal! incident that may scarcely be used as an example of the remuneration of the “faculty.” Eremin the annals of medicine and surgery it must remain a thing of humor and surprise.—Leisure Hour.