Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/363

 the pest of our social system, the chief danger to our institutions. Is it not a fact that we are the most lawyerridden community on the face of the earth? When our fathers, carefully shutting the door on kingcraft and priestcraft, made law supreme, was it their intention that this should mean the supremacy of petty quibblers and unscrupulous shysters?

"While denouncing the faults of a class," he continued, "you must not suppose that I arraign every individual of that class. For, leaving ourselves out of the question, can I forget that Lincoln and Garfield were lawyers and politicians as well as Charles Guiteau and Starrut Blatherskyte. We have a right, however, to judge a class, not by the practice of the exceptional few, but by the standard of ethics avowed and acted upon by the many.

"The dangerous element in our midst may be roughly classified as follows: First and most numerous, though not most dangerous, are the predatory classes proper, from the tramp, just hovering on the verge of crime, to the millionnaire swindler, able to repay with four-figure checks the advice that enables him to rob with impunity. Next come lawyers, the efficient allies of the preceding class, which, without their aid, would cease to exist, or would become, at least, greatly diminished in numbers. As the feudal tyrant jealously protected the game, to him both a pleasure and a profit, though a destructive misance to the luckless husbandman; so the legal fraternity watchfully guard the interests of the class with whose existence their own is so closely involved. Last come the professional politicians, a hybrid class that combines,