distinctive treatment; but it is only by acquiring a correct knowledge of them all, that one can fully comprehend the combined influence which these four organs may have upon existing affairs.

My subject is the Bar, but I must elucidate it, here and there, by brief reference to the Pulpit, the Press, and the Stage.

In a confederation of States like the one which we have established, with a written Constitution, it seems natural that the lawyers should predominate in the government. They framed the former instrument. They both make and interpret the laws. While this is said to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, it is not, perhaps, going too far to add, subject to the lawyers. At least, the crude sentiments of the people, must be filtered through the lawyers, first as politicians, then as legislators, and afterwards as lawyers and Judges. The lawyers swarm in all of the departments of the National and State Government, and while they never act in public questions as an organized body-as a unit their influence, in all branches of public and private life, is most profound and penetrating. It is, therefore, both the right and interest of the whole people to demand that lawyers should be intelligent, capable, honest, and devoted to the administration of

justice. When hundreds of lawyers are turned out upon the community each year, to graze upon all of the pastures of public office; when they swarm in, and control, every branch of the government, executive, judicial and legislative, no question is of more importance to the people than to know whether this dominating class is living up to its true mission. Despite this palpable truth, the laity has paid no attention to the subject. Nor does the Bar make any full, real, introspection of itself.

"Know thyself" was the Delphian invocation. In every aspect of life, it is to be classed among the most important of commands. It has been overlooked, or neglected, by the lawyers in respect to their office. At least, no one has yet made public the results of an investigation of the profession. While the multitudinous treatises which legal writers have published, cover almost every inch in the extensive field of technical law, the important region of the lawyer's vocation seems to have escaped them. Apparently no lawyer has yet published the real nature of his calling— going from the top to the bottom of it. The reason is obvious. It is a subject more literary and general, than legal. It carries one far beyond precedent. He who ventures therein must be prepared to quit the sacred precincts of precedent and stare decisis, and depend upon ethics, and

the natural conditions, which underlie human society.

When lawyers become authors, they are unable to free themselves from technical and professional restraints, and while their works have done something, to reduce the law to a science, within itself, yet its more comprehensive relations have escaped them. Hence the enormous importance of those aspects, which, while doubtless felt in a dim way, have hitherto received but little recognition as living forces in society.

But beyond all of this; when a lawyer undertakes an honest introspection of his profession, he is very apt to run into a confession. He must then say some ugly things about himself. Men do not like to confess, except to themselves. Hence, while many lawyers have doubtless ruminated upon the subject-covering with their mind's eye the same field which I am about to traverse they have not screwed their courage to a point of putting their thoughts upon paper.

It is of the first importance to endeavor to ascertain, accurately, the due relation of lawyers to other interests of the community, and then to inquire if they have lived up to it.

What is a lawyer? What is his real mission? What relation does he bear to the government of which he is a citizen? What are his real duties to society?

Some technical books have been written about the obligations of lawyers. Warren published his lectures,1 the broad title of which, if it had been sustained in the text, would have covered some of the ground gone over here; Forsyth's "History of Lawyers" is a most interesting historical review of the profession from remote periods; and Sharswood has contributed a little work on Professional Ethics. And there are several books on the lawyer's technical duties and liabilities.

Besides, narratives, lectures, and essays, without stint, have been written and published, covering legal romance and history, and all phases of a lawyer's life and of his relations to his client; but no one has raised the curtain upon the lawyer in his full relations to society. In all of their writings, one sees that the lawyer's vision of his calling, seems to have extended no further than to a contemplation of his duties to his clients, and to the courts. We look in vain for any adequate, distinctive, treatment of this subject, beyond this narrow view.

It is quite well understood that to his clients the lawyer is held to unexceptionable purity of conduct, and that he must be fair and honorable with the Court. These duties are imperishably

1" The Moral, Social and Professional Duties of Attorneys and Solicitors."

written upon the lawyer's mind. They seem to be a part of the milk of his education, which he unconsciously imbibes before entering upon the duties of his office.

The lawyers stop here in the survey of their mission, and as there is no course of instruction, or book, which opens to them their full duties, it is not surprising, that they start out in professional life, with a very inadequate knowledge of their calling. Fundamentally, they believe that, at the top and bottom of their professional career, they should serve their clients at all sacrifices, sometimes even of truth and justice.

Accordingly, I know of no occupation more interesting, than to attempt to hold up to the lawyer, a faithful picture of his real mission. It then will be seen, that a large number of the lawyers are delinquents to society, not with malice prepense, but from a failure to appreciate the real and full nature of their professional duties.