He seemed to understand completely. Then he asked if there would be any difficulty in employing one man to deal with, for example, banking, while someone else looked after delivering things he wanted sent; especially if there were problems far away from the place where one of the solicitors worked. I asked him to give me more details, so that I might not accidentally give him the wrong idea, so he said

"I shall give an example. Your friend and mine, Mr. Peter Hawkins, works under the shadow of your beautiful cathedral at Exeter, which is far from London. With your help he buys a place in London for me. Good! Now let me say honestly that I know you think it is strange that I have employed someone so far from London instead of someone who lives there. The reason was that I wanted the work to be done for my benefit only. Someone living in London might, perhaps, have some idea how this business might help himself or a friend. Therefore I went out of town to find someone to do the job, someone who would work only for my own good.

Now, I have a lot of business, and let us say I want to send something, to Newcastle, or Durham, or Harwich, or Dover. Couldn't this be done more easily by giving the business to someone working in these ports?"

I answered that certainly it would be very easy. However, we solicitors had a system which allowed each solicitor to employ another. In this way local work can be done on the instructions of any solicitor. The client simply has to employ one man, and without further trouble many others would also work for him.