Truth, like all other good things, may be loved unwisely — may be pursued too keenly — may cost too much. And surely the meanness and the mischief of prying into a man's confidential consultations with his legal adviser, the general evil of infusing reserve and dissimulation, uneasiness, suspicion, and fear, into those communications which must take place, and which, unless in a condition of perfect security, must take place uselessly or worse, are too great a price to pay for truth itself.
Justice Bruce, 1846, re client-solicitor privilege, Pearse v Pearse 63 ER 950.