digious influence over the readers and thinkers of the present day, and that what appears in its columns is but the culmination of some current and prominent idea, be that idea right or wrong.

The theme of this critic of our profession is no exception to this rule. I say our profession, for it cannot be inferred from the article whether the author is a lawyer, or one of those harmless people who, from the "time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," have amused themselves and a vulgar and prejudiced audience by berating lawyers. It is a fact, however, much to be regretted, that writers of the present day, and some of them very bright in their calling, will take advantage of any ignorant, but prevalent, popular prejudice to score a sensation, or win cheap applause, regardless of how sacred may be the theme. which evokes their satire, or invites their sophistry.

This critic says:

"For what purpose do people employ attorneys? To advise them as to the moral status of their claims? By no means! They want to know, in the first place, whether they have good cases at law, and if they have, they want those cases pushed to a successful issue, regardless of any questions of ethics that may arise concerning them. The bulk of the men who have business in the courts in this era consider themselves capable of being their own custodians of morals."

Again he writes:

"Can an attorney be successful in his calling if he follows the lines of integrity and the promptings of conscience with unvarying strictness?

Such ideas as these (for they cannot be called principles) would damn any man or profession that followed or tolerated them.

If this critic be a lawyer, he is a disciple of Machiavelli; if not, he would have our members appear as submitting to the teachings of that crafty Florentine, as a substitute for the law and the recognized ethics of a profession, both of which unsparingly denounce the end by which only the means that attained it can be justified.

He says again:

"The profession of the law is, to a certain extent, in ill repute. Lawyers are regarded, as a class, with something more than sus

picion, so far as their professional integrity is concerned. More serious still is the fact that this suspicion is not wholly unfounded, and that this lack of integrity, if such it may be called, goes not only unrebuked by the people at large, but is actually placed at a premium by those people when they become prospective or active litigants."

These observations of the author, upon both the profession and its practices, are not only mischievous, but wholly unfounded and absolutely untrue.

They cannot be true from the very nature of things. Law, as a rule for the actions of men, has ever been a science.

Philosophers and theorists have speculated as to why man was evolved into a being superior to all others; why he has established governments; whence come his social and gregarious proclivities? The answer is furnished by his inherent love of order; his innate perceptions of right and wrong-the diviñe inspiration called Law.

As a profession we unconsciously entertain the idea, and a sublime one, too, that our law is somewhere fixed and immutable; that we have not reached its hidden source, but that it will be reached.

That the law has been kept as pure as finite and fallible creatures could keep it, is true; that it shall be kept pure, is the universal demand; that those who expound, and those who administer the law, cannot be separated from the morale of the law, is equally true. How can the law, which must be kept pure, be separated from the man whose reason must expound and interpret it? How can an impure creature utter pure reason and pure morals?

I assume as a fact not less incontestable, that the forces of every enlightened nation of the present, are steadily and surely tending from good to better, and the most potent of these forces is the law element.

The natural desire, especially in the legal profession, to succeed, and through that success to win an honorable fame, develops the inherent purity and probity of its devotees; and, surely, no man can achieve permanent success, as a teacher of a code of correct morals, who is not himself inherently noble, pure and good.

Confessing, as we now confess, that the vital principles of our law were derived from the nations of southern Europe, and have lived through the alternate light and darkness of twenty centuries, it must have some inherent force superior to other sciences that are in themselves not exact.

Whether administered by the Latin, the Teutonic or the English race, the vital principles are the same.

Hume says that in less than ten years after the accidental discovery of the Justinian Pandects at Amalfi, the Roman civil law was taught at the University of Oxford, and that it was remarkable, that in the decline of Roman learning, when the philosophers were universally infected with superstition and sophistry, and the poets and historians with barbarism, the lawyers were yet able, by the constant study and close imitation of their predecessors, to maintain the same good sense in their decisions and reasonings and the same pufity in their language and expressions.

The ancient States of Europe have changed and divided, and new languages have been formed and spoken, but all give expression to the same vital principles of law. The Colonies in our own land repudiated the English Crown, but when this government was formed, the English common law of reason was triumphantly crowned the Majesty of this Republic. Then how can the individuals of a profession, who have preserved, as the purest of all sciences or doctrines, the Law, be ignoble, insincere and corrupt?

Theology has been the object of incessant attack from skeptics and agnostics; yea, every science has had its enemies who have denounced it as an imposition, save our law; and it is impressive as well as curious to contemplate with what unanimity the lawyers, be they ancient or modern, pagan or Christian, have believed. with the eloquent Athenian, that our law "is the invention and gift of heaven." And when our great expounders lay down its. hallowed principles, how sacredly it is done! How divinely glow the the lights of liberty, humanity and justice! Tribonian. so admired the virtues of Justinian, his gracious master, that he affected a pious fear that he, like Elijah and Romulus, would be taken from earth alive and translated to heaven. It was indeed a just tribute to the consecrated labor of the accomplished juris

consults, who codified the laws of France, when their associate, the great First Consul, declared that he would go down to posterity with the Code in his hands.

In declaring, as I now declare, without qualification, the personal and professional integrity of my brethren, I mean to speak only of those who appreciate and elevate their high office, for of such is the great majority of our profession composed.

That we, unfortunately, have men licensed to practice law, who are a disgrace to the profession, cannot be denied; so has every calling, sacred and profane. So it has ever been; so it will ever be. Of these disreputable creatures, rendered pitiable by a scorning profession, I have no inclination to speak, nor need they be made the subject of denunciation. Like all persons who assail sacred and established principles and creeds, the critics of our profession select the lowest types of our calling, and levelling at them their sarcasm and sophistry (the usual weapons of the skeptic) they hold them up to public scorn as models.

Men generally act rightly from the promptings of conscience; some, however, from expediency. Both these causes concur in the practice of law. To act rightly is to obtain the approbation of those who determine what the law is; and there is no other profession or calling in which disingenuous or dishonorable conduct on the part of its members is so mercilessly exposed.

It should not be understood from this that we are ever on the alert for a victim to sacrifice, for the brethren are world-famed for their charity, forbearance and friendship toward each other. Jealousy has absolutely been banished from its ranks. What other calling can say the same?

There is no hope in, or incentive to, rascality in the profession of law. The rascal has no day in court; he has no standing before court or jury, and true, as well as pointed, is the remark of some one, "that, above all others, the legal profession has a greater hatred for its knaves and a greater contempt for its fools."

Our critic repudiates the idea that he includes in his essay the disreputable members of the bar, but his discussion shows that he is either insincere in this assertion, or ignorant of the honorable conduct and dealings of our great majority. He not only deals with the small men, but the apparently small things of the law.

He says that now no one will deny that it is ignoble and unmanly for any one of sound mind to plead infancy in order to avoid an honest obligation. Can it be forgotten that the philosophy of the law among all civilized people is to protect the weak and helpless; and, whether it be human or divine law, there is a period during the earlier years of life when the individual is not held. accountable even for crime itself? How futile this recognition of weakness would be if it were left to be determined as individual

cases should arise. Hence the period is fixed by a standard of years and by positive law.

He says further:

"Why is the lawyer, who assists one in this plea, less ignoble and unmanly than he who asserts it?"

Again he concludes that our statutes of limitations sometimes work injustice. Does he suppose that it is the duty of the lawyer to overthrow the law, instead of maintaining it? In his own language:

"Is the lawyer to set himself up higher than the law? Are the duties of lawyers more sacred than the duties of the courts?"

If a client pleads infancy or limitation, must the lawyer more than the court " go back and unearth his motive?" Must he probe the intellect of youth, and pronounce it either weak or the mature brain of an adult? Must he inquire whether the statute of limitations is the only plea that will save his client from an unjust demand, whose evidence of right has been swept away by the relentless hand of time?

Turning then to our criminal procedure, he discusses the question embodied in the oft-repeated query: "How can a lawyer conscientiously defend a guilty client?" and treats it with the same current idea that a lawyer always expects to acquit his client, regardless of his guilt or innocence. He, with the prejudiced world, forgets that the boast and safety of our law is that no man shall be convicted and punished except by due process of law; that the presumption of innocence follows the accused through the ordeal of every trial. He forgets that guilt has its degrees, and that a beneficent law provides for this. Shall the faithful lawyer, for mercy's sake alone, not be allowed to mitigate the punishment of even the guilty? What kind of bloody ma