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Poictiers, and an express was despatched there by some of the high functionaries of state, who pointed out the public scandal which this state of things occasioned, and urged that the law pressed too severely upon the modesty of the respectable members of the bar, and that if all modesty were removed, the honorarium would become the basest and most mercenary gain.' The king immediately sent a message post-haste back, confirming the order of the parliament, and enjoining the advocates on their allegiance to obey it. Those who had stripped off their gowns were, at the same time, commanded to resume their profession. The refractory barristers did not dare to disobey the royal mandate, but returned to their duties, and thus the tumult was appeased. The law, however, as De Thou informs us, fell into desuetude. Fournel, in his narrative of this contretemps, tries to make out that the advocates were successful in their resistance, and that the king gave way. This, however, is a mistake. With a pardonable zeal for the credit of his order, he represents the royal commands to the barristers to .resume their gowns as a privilege accorded to them of practicing, notwithstanding that they had, by their own act, disbarred themselves. And he thus infers, that as no evil consequence resulted from their contumacy, the king never intended the ordinance to be obeyed.

1 Such is the account given by De Thou; but it is not easy to see how the modesty of the bar was affected by this law, unless indeed the amount of fees was so large that the fortunate recipients were too bashful to acknowledge the high price at which their services were valued. Meyer, however, says, "Le refus des avocats au parlement de Paris de se soumettre à une taxe, était non seulement noble, mais beaucoup plus dans l'intéret des parties, que les ordonnances mesquines qui, sous prétexte de veiller à des exactions, décréditent la pratique judiciarie, et laissent le public en proie à l'avidité des patriciens subalternes."—Inst. Jud. vi. 554.

A

CHAPTER X.

FORENSIC CASUISTRY.

WORK which professes to treat of the office of an advocate would be incomplete if it did not embrace what we may call the ethics of the question, and examine how far it is consistent with morality and good conscience, to be ready to espouse either side of an argument,--to lend the aid of great abilities to shelter guilt from punishment, — and become the consenting instrument whereby malice and iniquity are too often enabled to accomplish their designs.

For doubtless it does seem a startling fact, that there should exist in the community a body of men, preeminent in intellect, and held in honor and esteem, whose Occupation it is to employ all the resources which wit and learning can supply, in advocating whatever cause they are paid to undertake, and in specious and plausible attempts to make the worse appear the better side; who throw the shield of their eloquence over the innocent and the guilty alike; and whose most signal triumphs frequently consist in arresting the arm of justice, when public expectation demands that it should strike the offending criminal.

If a traveler from Atlantis or Utopia were told that the man to whom he has lately been introduced-and who conversed with him so wisely and so well upon some of the deep questions in ethics and religion-who

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seemed to be an earnest inquirer after truth-whose character stands high for integrity, and who friendship is valued by all who know him-did, after quitting his society, immediately proceed to invest himself in a particular costume-and then, in the solemn temple of justice, successfully attempt to convince a jury that a culprit arraigned on the charge of murder, of whose guilt he had not himself the shadow of a doubt, was innocent-and afterwards, within a brief interval, exert all his ingenuity to prove that a will, by which a family would be disinherited and reduced to beggary, was valid, though in his own mind he was satisfied that the testator was at the time of the execution of it, insanewe may imagine the surprise and incredulity of the stranger, and how far from easy it would be to explain. to him the apparent inconsistency.

The case is here stated strongly, for it is better not to conceal or disguise the difficulty. The venality of lawyers has been a favorite theme for declamation in every age, and in Pagan Rome and Christian England alike, has afforded ample materials for satire and reproach. In the following lines Ben Jonson has drawn a picture which few, I fear, will have charity enough to pronounce a caricature:

I oft have heard him say how he admir'd

Men of your large profession, who could speak
To every cause, and things mere contraries,
Till they were hoarse again, yet all be law;
That with most quick agility could turn
And return, make knots and undo them,
Give forked counsel, take provoking gold
On either hand, and put it up. These men
He knew would thrive with their humility-
And for his part he thought he should be biess'd
To have his son of such a suffering spirit;
So wise, so grave, of so perplexed a tongue,
And loud withal, that could not wag, nor scarce
Lie still, without a fee.1

1 Volpone, or the Fox.

Ard Bishop Hall thus disports himself in verse at their expense :

Woe to the weale where many lawyers bee;
For there is no such store of maladie!
'Twas truly said, and truly 'twas foreseene
The fat kine are devoured of the lean.1

So fair a mark for sarcasm was not likely to escape the caustic pen of Swift, who accordingly, in the voyage to the Houyhnhnms, makes Gulliver tell his master, the Grey Horse, that "there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take especial care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong, so that it will take thirty years to decide whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me or to a stranger three hunJred miles off. Here my master interposing, said it was a pity that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind as these lawyers, by the description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge. In answer to which, I assured his honor, that, in all points out of their own trade, they were usually the most stupid and ignorant generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse, as in that of their own profession."

1 Virgidemiæ or Satires.

"Vous en ferez, je crois, d'cxcellents, avocats:

Ils sont fort ignorants."-Les Plaideurs, Act ii. Sc. 14.

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Nor is the charge against them of moral ob'iquity confined to England. M. Cormenin, better known perhaps under his assumed name of Timon, in one of those brilliant sketches, entitled, Etudes sur les Orateurs Parlementaires, thus scoffs at the idea of any fixed principle or moral sense in an advocate:-" We are told that M. Sauzet has no principles; but pray inform me where is the advocate to be found who has principles? When one has been employed for twenty years of his life about the true and the false-and been occupied only in stitching up, as he best may, the holes in the coats of clients, through which their fraud and malice find vent, it is difficult, nay, impossible, to have any fixity of principle."

Such passages might be easily multiplied; but it would be an ungracious task, and it is impossible to read the current literature of the day, without seeing how prevalent is the opinion, that the profession of an advocate is inconsistent with a stern and strict sense of moral obligation. And it can not, I think, be denied, that, independently of what seems to be an erroneous view of the question of his duties, the practice and principles of some of its members sometimes give color to, if they do not justify, the accusation; for they seem to view their profession as a kind of threatre, where they may personate any character as the actors of the hour, and not hold themselves responsible for what they do or utter, while keeping up the part they have assumed. But this is not so. The analogy fails in this essential respect, that in the one case all is notoriously fictitious, in the other all is real.' And whenever men imagine that

'Nihil habeat forum ex scend is one of Bacon's maxims; but he there refers to fictitious cases, brought into the courts in order to determine points of law. See De Augm. Scient. lib. iii, cap. 3, aph. 91. Sergeant Maynard, who died in the cign of William III., is said to have had "the ruling passion strong in death" to such a degree, that he left a will purposely worded so as to cause litigation, in order that sundry questions which had been "moot points" in his lifetime, might be settled for the benefit of posterity.