the noble sense of professional honor and duty made him treat them with indignant disdain. Our author presents one of those insidious and unjust efforts, and accompanies it with judicious and pertinent remarks, conveyed in nervous and polished language.

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Many occasions occur in the course of an extensive practice at the bar, when, from the blindness of popular prejudice or the easiness of public credulity, a counsel finds himself in situations which may expose him to ruin, without the sympathy and support of his brethren. In the memorable case of the libel against Paine, for that part of his Rights of Man,' which attacked the English government, Erskine stood forward his intrepid and eloquent defender. All the arts of intimidation were employed to drive him from his purpose. A conspiracy was formed to deprive Paine of the benefit of counsel; but despising promises, and regardless of threats, Erskine was true to that independence of action and integrity of purpose, which should ever characterize a member of the bar. For this act of disobedience, he was put under the ban and deprived of office. Now that time has mellowed the passions of the moment, we look in vain for their excuse or justification. He was the defender, not of language tending to sedition; not of an inflammatory attempt to excite opposition to law, tumult, disorder, or misrule; not of calumnies against the living magistrate; but of a sober effort to bring about the redress of acknowledged grievances, by addressing the universal reason of the nation. He remained under a temporary cloud; but true to himself, and fortunate in the adherence of his brethren, he emerged from the vapor which obscured him into the brightest sunshine of popular and royal favor."

Fearless and independent conduct like that of Erskine is not rare among the members of the profession. The cultivation of a knowledge of the principles of right, inspires the lawyer with the spirit of freedom and independence. The position he occupies exposes his actions to criticism, and renders him vigilant and bold, ready and resolute. The wholesome influence of the integrity, or the disastrous effects of the dishonesty of the lawyer, are experienced in the performance of sacred and confidential duties, where he can act without any other fear than that of conscience, where he is placed beyond detection, and with no other guide than his moral accountability and professional honor. To quicken. his sense of propriety, he should be taught both by precept and example, that the sphere in which he moves is exalted;

that the obligations it imposes are high and holy; that he is one of the ministers of human justice. To prepare himself for the performance of his duties, and to protect his profession from odium, he should cultivate a knowledge of what is required for the formation of the legal character. The reader of the discourse of our author will find, that professional integrity not only requires truth and prudence, but sound and exact learning.

"Professional integrity requires, in the first place, that he should possess all the learning of his art; that his legal knowledge should be profound and exact, in order to direct his client wisely. He will be distinguished not only for the assiduity necessary for this, but for honor, sincerity, and truth, in all his relations with the client, the court, the bar, and the community. If sincerity be loved in the common intercourse of life, how desirable to find it in a counsel, into whose ear has been poured, perhaps, the confidential breathings which have been withheld from every other mortal! In the rude ages of chivalry, veracity was esteemed a cardinal and indispensable virtue, and without it, the dignity of knighthood attracted to its possessor only the contempt and infamy of his order. Of all the detestable properties for which a man of liberal aspirations may be known, is falsehood, a vice equally impolitic and base. But, on the other hand, how noble a consciousness does he enjoy, how proud a niche does he occupy in the hearts of his fellow men, whose lips have never been polluted with untruth, and whose promise, without the sign-manual to attest its nature, has always been scrupulously and to the letter redeemed."

The ignorant lawyer can hardly be honest. He assumes to perform duties which require learning, he appears as the expounder of laws he does not understand, as the advocate to protect his client from illegal punishment, the nature of whose offence is to him unknown, and, as a sentinel, to prevent the bench from invading private and public rights the boundaries of which he cannot define.

"Liberal studies," (says our author,)" are necessary to counteract the circumscribing and benumbing influences of a professional addiction to law. The man who devotes himself exclusively to its details, becomes as pitiable in his helplessness as the blind or hoodwinked mill-horse, unsuited for every purpose but the round he is accustomed to travel, and only fitted for that by the appliances which confine him to his circle. Too strict an adherence to legal forms cramps the energies and contracts the mental vision, rendering it acute in the perception of immediate objects, but, by disqualifying it for a wider range, lessens the sphere of its observation."

Not only are liberal studies necessary for ornament and recreation, but no lawyer can faithfully discharge his duty without the various knowledge they impart. Without them he cannot sustain the dignity of his profession, or honestly engage in its practice. Those who affect to despise them wish to level the profession to their own low tastes and studies. Who is more capable successfully to defend his fellow citizens than he who has devoted his youth to the study of the best authors and models, and his manhood to the minute and profound study of the laws of his country, whose mind has received impressions sound and durable from the great lawyers, orators, and patriots and statesmen of ancient and modern times? In the performance of his various duties he derives aid from these; he argues with precision; states his facts with clearness and force; and draws illustrations from many sources. A lawyer thus imbued, thus prepared for forensic exercises, is ambitious of excellence and eminence; he will despise the sordid acts and low tricks of the pettifogger. He cannot tolerate legal quackery, which is only a misnomer of knavery. He will not pull down the elevations which his brethren may have reached by untiring efforts, and by deep and various learning, but he will endeavor to reach them through the same path and the same labors. The reverse of such a character is open to the seductions of gain, and prone to deviations from moral rectitude. He may crouch to seize his prey, and truckle to the rich knave; he may become the scourge instead of the defender of the poor; and poison the fountains of justice. Learning and ability should be synonymous with integrity and success; ignorance and pettifogging with dishonesty and defeat. While all civilized nations have held the upright and able lawyer in the highest esteem, the keenest and most sarcastic wit has been directed against the pettifogger: leguleius quidam cautus atque acutus, præco actionum, cantor formarum, auceps syllaba

rum.

All the studies of this great profession should tend to liberalize the mind and exalt the sense of duty, of honor and of patriotism; hence meanness, ignorance and deception, cannot be tolerated in its members. The incongruity of ignorance and presumption assuming the place of learning and dignity, of chicanery attempting to substitute itself for honesty and talent, has provoked the ire of the wits, and made the attempt odious to the public. The disasters produced by such usurpa

tions, are destructive of our rights, subversive of confidence, promotive of vindictive litigation, and bring the profession as a body into disrepute and dishonor. "The profession," says Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall, "had fallen into the hands of freedmen and plebeians, who, with cunning, rather than skill, exercised a sordid and pernicious trade. Some of them procured admittance into families for the purpose of fomenting differences, of encouraging suits, and preparing a harvest of gain for themselves and their brethren. Others, recluse in their chambers, maintained the dignity of legal professors, by furnishing a rich client with subtleties to confound the plainest truths, and with arguments to color the most unjustifiable pretensions. The splendid and popular class was composed of the advocates who filled the forum with the sound of their turgid and loquacious rhetoric. Careless of favor and of justice, they are described for the most part as ignorant and rapacious guides, who conducted their clients through a maze of expense, of delay and disappointment."

The ignorance, corruption, and venality of the lawyers, produce the disorganization of society, and many national evils; while the purity of justice, prosperity of the country, the preservation of rights, and the uninterrupted enjoyment of liberty, depend on their integrity, honor and knowledge in the administration of the laws.

"The lawyer exists, (says our author,) and can exist only, in the genial atmosphere of freedom. It is from him especially, that traditional errors and practical abuses must find a corrective. Reform and improvement, under his auspices, hope for stability and progress. But he stands not only as a sentinel against the inroads of a political despot, and the scourge of public abuses, but he is the shield of private injuries and the assertor of legal retribution. He is interposed between the corrupt, incompetent and erring judge, and the wronged and trembling suitor. The avenger of the innocent, he visits upon the wrong-doer the penalties of the law, and protects the weak and defenceless from the overbearing hand of oppression and power."

Few are aware of the many benefits, public and private, which are derived from an honorable, learned, patriotic, and independent bar. It is the interest of the community that the deficiency and delinquency of the members of it should be indignantly denounced as an abuse of public confidence

and trust. The profession is deeply interested in the honor, the integrity, the learning, the conduct and character of its members. The prejudices of the public against the body should be removed. The grovelling spirit that would bring down the qualifications of its members to a low standard must be rebuked. Those who are desirous of exercising the high and ennobling functions of the profession should be prepared by long and patient studies, by constant and profitable mental exercises, by cultivating habits of profound reasoning and acquiring the power of prompt and correct thinking and speaking. The rights he defends or enforces, relate to the multifarious concerns of men, whether they spring from his physical or mental labor-he must, therefore, collect stores of varied knowledge. The delusion that a man with little learning can become a great lawyer, is injurious and full of evil. Yet the credulity of the world in favor of the truth of the miracles of quackery is often exhibited in raising to temporary importance and fame a legal quack or pettifogger. The same low, cunning, and vulgar means which are used by the medical quack to sustain himself against the attacks of science, are employed by the pettifogger to resist the influence of knowledge and talent. The latter are exposed and ridiculed, and the former publicly denounced. However, they cling like excrescences to the body, and neither the knife of the surgeon nor the wit of the barrister can effect their removal. The pettifogger, and those who belong to the class that support him, maintain the opinion which our author rebukes, that the reading of the lawyer cannot stray with safety from the beaten track of his profession. "A sentiment of this kind is so inimical in its spirit to the genius of the age, and so injurious in its practical tendency to the public and the profession, that so opportune an occasion as this should not be omitted to present and expose its fallacy. The law is not only a learned but a liberal profession; and the lawyer, of all men, should elevate and fortify his principles by various and enlarged studies against the insidious temptations to which he is on every side exposed. The sparks of every science (says Finch) are taken up in the ashes of the law." How dark and bewildered we should grope our way without a more certain and satisfactory guide than these sparks can furnish? "Your mere lawyer (says Mr. Warren, in his law studies) is a pettifogger. He seldom distinguishes between principle and technicality; the latter