law see also HARD cases make bad law; IGNORANCE of the law is no excuse for
breaking it; every LAND has its own law; NECESSITY knows no law; NEW lords, new laws;
POSSESSION is nine points of the law; SELF-preservation is the first law of nature.
The more LAWS, the more thieves and banditsAttributed to Lao Tzu (c 604-c 531 BC): The more laws and orders are made prominent,
The more thieves and bandits there will be (Tao-te Ching lvii. in Wing-Tsit Chan (ed.) Source
Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), 166. Cf. ARCESILAUS (3rd cent. BC):
(in STOBAEUS Florilegium xliii.
91); and TACITUS Annals iii. 27 Corruptissima republica plurimae leges, the more corrupt
the state the more numerous the laws.
1573 J. SANFORDE Garden of Pleasure 4 Where there are many lawes, there be
also or else haue ben many vices. c 1620 MIDDLETON & ROWLEY World Tost at
Tennis (Works ed. Bullen VII. 176) The more laws you make The more knaves thrive
by’t. 1667 MILTON Paradise Lost xii. 283 So many Laws argue so many sins Among
them. 1732 T. FULLER Gnomologia no. 4663 The more Laws the more offenders. 1766
O. GOLDSMITH Vicar of Wakefield xxvii. The multitude of laws produce new vices, and
new vices call for fresh restraints. 2002 Times 19 Mar. 30 Citing the ancient Chinese Lao-
tse’s dictum, the more laws, the more thieves and bandits, Norberg insists that ‘the
commonest way of corupting a nation through and through is by stipulating permits and
controls for production, for imports, for exports and investments’. honesty and
dishonesty; law and lawyersA man who is his own LAWYER has a fool for his client1809 Port Folio (Philadelphia) Aug. 132 He who is always his own counseller will
often have a fool for his client. 1850 L. HUNT Autobiography II. xi. The proprietor of the
Morning Chronicle pleaded his own cause, an occasion in which a man is said to have ‘a
fool for his client’. 1911 British Weekly 21 Dec. 386 There is a popular impression, for
which there is a good deal to be said, that a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his
client. 1975 D. BAGLEY Snow Tiger xiii. You must have heard the saying that the man
who argues his own case has a fool for a lawyer. 2002 Spectator 30 Mar. 35 The man who
is his own lawyer has a fool for a client, and that goes double for retired law lecturers
from Newcastle Polytechnic. law and lawyerslawyer see also the DEVIL makes his Christmas pies of lawyers’ tongues and clerks’
fingers.