There is the appearance of Scriptural authority to justify the lawyer (?) who appends to his professional card this: "Seek me early as your counsel, for know ye, that even the righteous cannot be saved without an advocate," but it is not professional.

In the law, as in the gospel, those wishing salvation should seek it rather than that the other members of so honorable a profession should go about like venders of patent nostrums.

Diligence, love of the science and its lore, and a desire to elevate the profession, should and will bring clientage, without either quack advertising or paid editorials.

No man can attain success in his profession unless his heart is in his work. Lawyers, love your profession for its own sake; on that commandment hangs all the law, as well as the gospel.

Drumming for business is not alone an impropriety. It is often an offense against right and justice. Let me instance: Suppose A. B. to be engaged in some useful business, and, like many business men have done, he has loaded himself with property, and in order to conduct his operations, has placed some incumbrances on his property and he is struggling against a current. Capital is always timid and panicky and A. B.'s creditors are not exceptions to the rule. The shyster is alert for business; his eye is on the generous docket fees and luxuriant commissions that appear to him ripe and ready to gather. He winks approvingly at the contemplation of his own meanness, and sallies forth to alarm the creditors, and felicitating himself upon his ability to arrive at results "by ways that are dark and tricks that are vain," he breaks up a useful business, he hastens the ruin of a good citizen, he sends a wife and helpless children to the poor-house.

Do not understand me as condemning the profession and justifying the verdict that "the lawyers are worse than the buzzards." I recognize the fact that the profession is composed, as a rule, of the greatest intellects and the purest minds of every nation on the earth. That lawyers ar

more trusted and less frequently betray trusts, even, than men of any other business or profession.

But in the proportion that one is confided in and trusted, in that proportion is the meanness of that individual who betrays the great trust reposed in him.

It is on account of the isolated oases of unrighteous drumming and shystering that lawyers as a class come into undeserved disrepute.

It is, therefore, that the shyster is characterized in the strongest terms.

A North Carolina magistrate, as I read in the Bar, has thus sized up the modern product. He says: “So far as I have observed our modern shyster, he has one striking peculiarity; each one seems to be sui generis; he organizes himself, operates a system of his own invention, and has no sense whatever of ethical propriety. The highest ambition of each shyster seems to be to out-shyster every other shyster, and to be a shyster unlike any other shyster. Indeed each one seems to be a specimen without a group, a type without a class, a species without a genus, an offspring without a parent, a fountain without a source, a nulius filius in social economy, a hermit in the solitude of his own infinite littleness, a full bullet in the woods of moral incertitude, an anomalous retarding force that we must reckon with as we advance along the highways of progress."

Thank fortune there are not inany real shysters.

The punishment inflicted by society is in part by public opinion. By attaching a stigma to certain conduct that will inspire no less dread than the civil authority.

Popular sanction is often more effective to cure an evil than any punishment that the civil law could inflict. And it is on this account that in many instances conduct truly reprehensible is unpunished by law, the loss of public esteem and the disgrace inflicted being relied upon to work all needed reform in the premises.

By the laws of nature it pays to work up to a high standard of morals and munners.

It is said that there is an eternal and intrinsic fitness in the things considered right and unfitness in things considered wrong.

The will of God always chooses in regard to this eternal fitness, and rational men are happier, more prosperous, in proportion as they approach to the likeness of the Deity. In proportion as they determine their actions in accordance with the eternal and intrinsic fitness of the Almighty will. Aside from ethical or moral considerations in the profession as in other things, it pays to do right. When members of the Bar once come to know that they can make money by being courteous, polite and upright, they will govern themselves accordingly.

It is not always apparent, at first sight, that self-interest requires obedience to the rules of professional ethics.

If your associates can with impunity be demagogues or sbysters, it seems a doubtful case if you can afford to be otherwise.

Law is defined to be a rule of action, and is to be applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action. And in morals and manuers there must be laws to govern all cases. Those who profess the law and who vouchsafe to practice it, should know the higher laws of ethics and should apply them in every case.

As the law teaches obedience to the law, so the members of the great profession should yield a willing obedience to every precept.

"It is business."

As illustrating how "business" is sometimes obscured by other matters and the difficulty of its discernment under certain circumstances I beg to read the following, said to be an actual occurrence in the noted breach of promise case brought against the Elder Cameron, while in the U. S. Senate:

The plaintiff, a sprightly, vivacious young woman, called on more than a score of reputable lawyers, before she succeeded in scuring counsel. The defense being made aware of her long search, decided to place some of the refusing lawyers on the stand to prove

that the woman had no standing. One of these was the famous Ned Hay, Washington's tireless entertainer, bon vivant and wit. Hay was asked if he knew anything of the case; he replied that he had refused to act as counsel for the young woman because he had seen a business letter from her to Senator Cameron. On the cross-examination, the letter referred to was produced by the plaintiff's connsel. Hay identified it, and the lawyers began to read it through. It was love, love, love, from beginning to end"deary," "honey," "darling," "angel," sweetheart," etc. "I believe you said this was a business letter?" said the lawyer, looking quizzically at Hay.

"That is what I said," Hay replied.

The reading was continued, and from time to time the same remark was made to Hay, who invariably returned the same answer. At last, just about when the court was beginning to believe that Hay had been mistaken, the lawyer reached the last sentence, which was an appeal for money. When he read it Hay shouted: :

"That's business! "'

When this law association, with all the learning and erudition of its members, shall have considered the law and lawyers of West Virginia: When the law, with its profound learning, its intricacies, its quirks, for that matter, has been dwelt upon at length: When its symmetry and beauty as a science have been admired and praised, and its practical utility considered: When government by injunction and the right of the married woman to dower or to hold their own or her husband's property, except from their husband's debts and other kindred questions are settled: When the lawyer and his many excellent traits have been discussed, but not "cussed," and the long train of illustrious examples of noble men who have graced the profession with their advanced scholarship, oratorical power, etc., have been passed in review: and sentimental ethics shall have been discussed to the entire satisfaction of everybody — no doubt the members of this body will have a higher appreciation of the importance of elevating and maintaining the standard of professional morals for the sake of the profession. But when I drop the unvarnished suggestion

that, aside from any sentimental considerations, it will be gain for the individual members of this body — in other words that it will be money in our pockets - I think I hear the distinct and emphatic response, "that is business."

"GOVERNMENT BY INJUNCTION."

BY WM. G. PETERKIN, ESQ.

The phrase "Government by Injunction," of late become so familiar, applies to a subject, the consideration of which opens up a field of thought and investigation so broad and far-reaching that it is practically impossible, within the necessary limits of such a paper as this, to treat it with anything like the thoroughness which it deserves.

Although there have arisen in the various State courts cases involving injunctions similar to those in the Federal courts which have attracted such universal attention, yet it has been against the decisions of the latter courts that the criticisms to which we shall allude has been chiefly directed, and it has been chiefly as descriptive of them that the phrase which forms our title has been coined. Jealousy of the enlargement of Federal power is older than the constitution itself, and even in those States and among those people who most favored the expansion of the power of the central government there has been a generally expressed and very grave apprehension lest what is assumed to be a new and usurped jurisdiction of the Federal equity courts should result in seriously undermining the foundations of personal liberty in the United States.

The particular manifestation of Federal equity jurisdiction which has excited such adverse ctiticism has been seen in the application of the injunction to strikes, and difficulties arising from strikes.

The feeling of distrust of, and opposition to, all courts and particularly to the Federal courts, resulting from the