So that instead of regarding ourselves with complacent insular satisfaction in this matter of Conciliation Courts we should rather begin to think furiously whether there is not a blot on our legal scutcheon which might be wiped away and whether we might not learn from our neighbours new lessons about justice and the poor.

English-speaking people move slowly, and though lawyers and publicists have had the virtues of Conciliation Courts before their eyes since Lord Brougham called attention to them a hundred years ago, yet it is difficult to get either laymen or lawyers to discuss them seriously. One reason is, no doubt, that lawyers who can best appreciate their value are not in this country-or perhaps in any other-ardent upholders of reforms that may cut down fees. The man in the street, too, who is most vocally abusive about the attorney, when he reads of a scheme for his elimination, is suddenly conscience-stricken and murmurs to himself that, bad as he is, the attorney, after all, is a man and a brother.

But it is not the elimination of the attorney that is sought after, but rather that the attorney should be put to higher uses and allowed to earn a living by some more honourable pursuit than that of exchanging useless letters with another of his kind, in the blessed hope that in the litigation they are promoting the costs of their futile folios will be allowed on taxation.

The attorney will, I hope, always remain with us, for we have many honourable uses for him, and we shall continue to go to him for counsel when we are sick at heart, just as we go to our doctor when we are sick in body. The modern doctor has long ago given up the blood

letting business and has abandoned the forceful methods of the blue pill and the black draught, and nowadays he makes fame and fortune by endeavouring to conciliate your method of living with the capacity of your liver. It must not be thought that the proposal of Conciliation Courts is put forward with any desire to wreck and destroy the great profession of the law. On the contrary, men like Lord Brougham and Abraham Lincoln, who consistently preached the duty of the lawyer to promote peace among his neighbours, were the very men to stalwartly defend the lawyers' rights and privileges. Both were leaders in the front rank of the practice of advocacy and upheld the great traditions of a profession they practised with honour to themselves and their calling. Indeed, it has always been those who loved their profession best who have sought to rescue it from the ill name that has been cast upon it through the greed and selfishness of a small minority and the undue conservatism of the majority.

We may look forward without dismay to an age that will find far more useful and honourable duties for the attorney of the future, and there is no reason why these new duties should be less remunerative. No civilised country can exist without a pure system of the administration of justice, and that will always need a trained professional class inspired by noble traditions. And, though I may not myself witness the introduction of Conciliation Courts, I have not the least doubt that the common sense of the citizens of the country will insist upon their adoption, and the wisdom of lawyers will in the end welcome their institution among us. I do not

see in the near future a land without lawyers, but in the new world I seriously believe that, in private as in public affairs, we shall strive more earnestly after peace, and the Law Society of the future will adopt as their official motto, "Blessed are the Peacemakers."

Chapter IV: Concerning Daniel O'Connell

T

O the world at large Daniel O'Connell was known as "The Liberator," but to his friends and neighbours he was "The Counsellor." There is an atmosphere of intimacy and affectionate regard about the old word "counsellor " that cannot be said to surround the modern abbreviation "counsel." "Counsellor " suggests advice, "counsel" connotes fees. Counsellor Pleydell could never have been the same shrewd, loyal, jovial, lovable character under the designation Pleydell, K.c. There is an aroma in the word "Counsellor" that recalls going circuit in a post-chaise and sleeping at strange inns, and sitting round the circuit table watching the members drop one by one on to the floor. In Ireland it was to "The Counsellor " that the peasant went in his trouble, for it was he alone who could stand up to the Crown prosecutor, and bandy words with the judge, and bully the perjured witnesses of the prosecution into truth or shame.

Daniel O'Connell, in his career at the Bar, was rightly acclaimed by the people as "The Counsellor." He remained a stuff-gownsman to the end; he never asked for silk, and refused the judgeship offered to him. No Government ennobled him. He had two titles, but they were given him by his fellow-men. In the greater world

of politics he was "The Liberator "; in his own demesne in Kerry, on the Munster Circuit and among the peasantry of the West he was "The Counsellor."

By birth and nature Daniel O'Connell was Irish of the Irish. He was born on August 6, 1775, a mile up the creek from the little town of Cahirciveen, in the barony of Iveragh, in the south-west of Kerry, a country he loved to the last. Macdonagh tells us that he came of an ancient Gaelic sept, and that for a hundred years back his ancestors were farmers at Darrynane. Like all good Irish, Scots, and Welsh, he was proud of his ancestry, and did not easily bear to be crossed in his estimation of their worth. His enemies loved to taunt him with the fact that he was a grandson of a village tradesman, and had no right to the prefix O' to his name Connell.

"The vagabond lies!" he exclaimed on reading a sketch of his life in which this was stated. "My father's family were very ancient, and my mother was a lady of the first rank." When, however, in later years, he was appealing to large audiences of the English democracy, he would boast: "I have no pride of ancestry. I am the son of a grazier or gentleman farmer."

In the first four years of his life O'Connell was brought up in an Irish cabin, and learned the Irish tongue from the foster-brothers and sisters with whom he played on the mud floor. He never knew a word of English until he was four years old. From this date until he first left home in 1790 for a school at Cork he ran wild in West Kerry. Had nature intended him for a Counsellor he could have had no better early education for the profession before him. As Macdonagh writes, "He joined