Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/336

308 policy of the lawgiver, which in a free country is and must be determined not by any one class, but by the people through their representatives. The office of the lawyer is first to inform the legislature how the law stands, and then, if change is desired, (as to which he is entitled to his opinion and voice like any other citizen,) to advise how the change may best be effected. Every modern legislature is constantly and largely dependent on expert aid of this kind. A well framed Act of Parliament, whatever amount of novelty it may contain, is as much an application of legal science as the considered judgment of a court. Legislation undertaken without legal knowledge is notoriously ineffectual, or, if not ineffectual, apt to create new troubles greater than any which it cures. There is no way by which modern law can escape from the scientific and artificial character imposed on it by the demand of modern societies for full, equal, and exact justice.

Frederick Pollock.