Here, the lawyer is both an attorney and counselor.

As popularly understood, the attorney's practice comprehends all the business of the lawyer, transacted outside of the precincts of the court.

As counsel, he acts in a more limited, but, as it is generally understood, a higher capacity. First, as the word implies, in a purely advisory relation to his client; and, second, in becoming the mouthpiece of his client in court,-where he acts directly under the influence of the judges.

In both relations, therefore, free scope is given to his best endowments, his learning, experience, wisdom, genius, and eloquence.

He is also constantly called upon to exercise the best qualities of trained diplomacy, in the negotiations attending the settlement of difficult questions, in the best interest of parties, whose excited passions, have to be considered, at every step.

By virtue of his official character as attorney and counselor, the lawyer draws to himself a multitude of other employments, not strictly of a technical nature-that is, which do not grow out of misunderstandings, or contests, to be settled in court.

He is employed as agent, as attorney in fact,

trustee, executor, administrator, and in a thousand and one other fiduciary relations, which the ramifications and necessities of business create. A large share of this part of the lawyer's business, however, as I have shown,1 has been gradually usurped by corporations, and, an extensive field of employment, removed from his control.

The lawyer appears everywhere, and in all stages of business transactions, and there is hardly an event of any magnitude in commercial affairs, in which his co-operation and counsel are not solicited.

His knowledge, judgment, experience, cleverness, and skill, are constantly drawn upon by his clients, who generally repose in their lawyers the utmost faith and confidence. He is in business, family, and other private and delicate matters, the trusted adviser and friend of his client, and is often consulted when the thoughts of the latter are in a chrysalis state, and he becomes an important factor in moulding his client's final judgment.

The confidence thus reposed is guarded, not only by the moral etiquette of the profession, but by positive statutory rules. It constitutes the most sacred part of the lawyer's functions. That it shall continue in its integrity is an im

1 Ante, p. 46.

portant interest of society, and it behooves society, for its own sake, that it should not assist in breaking it down, by vulgar and indiscriminate abuse of the character and functions of the lawyer as such.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LAWYER'S POLITICAL EMPLOYMENT AS A LEGISLATOR, AND IN OTHER CAPACITIES. THE DUTIES OF A LEGISLATOR.

EASILY, the most interesting relation, which a lawyer holds to the community, outside of his technical occupation, is that of a legislator.

From the commencement of the government, the lawyers have absolutely dominated in the Federal and State Legislatures. As I have said, they were the chief authors of the Constitution of the United States, and of all the State Constitutions. They are the natural and necessary interpreters of it; the guardians of it.

In the analysis, therefore, of the lawyer's relation to the community, it becomes of paramount importance to consider the duty and functions of a legislator. The forty-five State legislative mills (another has been since added to the list) are constantly grinding out Statutes,— useless and incoherent Statutes, most of them— and the Congress of the United States is engaged

in the same occupation. Laws have accumulated, with such rapidity, that the jurisprudence of the United States is in a condition approaching inextricable confusion and doubt. The remark is applicable to constitutional, commercial, and criminal, as well as all of the other, branches of the law. The subject requires separate treatment. This state of affairs produces two principal results: first, it entails upon litigants and the Federal and State Governments, enormous expense amounting to many, many, millions each year; and, in the second place, it creates such uncertainty in the law as, practically, to make justice a thing of doubt and chance. To remedy these anomalous conditions, it is necessary that we should have legislators who understand their functions. I can only say, in this connection, that the responsibility for all of this unnecessary accumulation of Statutes rests somewhere. Primarily, it must be charged to the individuals who make the laws,-the legislators,the lawyers.

What, then, are the duties of a legislator?

What are the qualifications which he should necessarily possess?

Primarily, he should know the relation which a citizen bears to the State-of which he is a member.

He must understand the origin and purpose