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 The Court and Bar of Colonial Virginia.

477

Witereas, Many troublesome suits are multi the field, ami did somctliing more than mere plied by the unskillfulness and couvetousness ly exist. of Attorneys, who have more intended their own Indeed, Professor Minor asserts, referring profit and their inordinate lucre than the good to this period, that, " lawyers lived and and benefit of their clients. flourished, the necessities of society prov Be it therefore enacted, That all Mercenary at ing more than a match for the stolidity of torneys be wholly expelled from such office, the Grand Assembly, so that that body, except such suits as they have already under abandoning at length the vain design of sup taken, and are now depending, and in case any person or persons shall offend contrary to this pressing the profession, betook itself to the act to be fined at the discretion oí the Court." not the less futile attempt of regulating their

In March, 1646, the act of 1642, provid ing for. the license and fees for Attorneys was repealed, and the act quoted above was reenacted. It does not seem, however, that the lawyers abandoned the colony, as in that case fur ther legislation would not have been neces sary. On the contrary an act calculated to annihilate them passed the Assembly at the next session in 1647. It provided that they should not " take any recompence either di rectly or indirectly; " from which it would appear there still existed some occult and in tangible methods by which the wary Attor ney managed to render a service and pocket his fees. But it was intended that the whole pro fession should be laid out and prepared for burial, by the further provision: " That it be further enacted, that if the courts shall perceive that in any case either pit. or de fendant by his weakness shall be likely to loose his cause, that they themselves may either open the cause or appoint some fitt •man ont of the people, to plead the cause, and allow him satisfaction requisite, and not allow any otlicr attorneys in private causes betwixt man and man in the country." How the war between them fared during ten years following, history is silent. It is safe however to assume, from the traditional ability of the legal craft to live, move and have their professional being, which in their case, is synonymous with the charging and collecting of fees; that during that unre corded decade, they camped somewhere on

charges." ' The warrant for this assertion is found in the following act of the Assembly in Decem ber, 1657. "This Assembly finding many inconveniences in the act prohibiting mercen ary attornies, doc therefore hereby enact, and be it by these presents enacted, that that act, and all other acts against mercenary attorneys be totally repealed. . . . And if any controversies arise between attorney and client about their ffee, it shall be deter mined in the court where the cause is pleaded." While laws prohibitory and restrictive, ap plying to attorneys, continued to be enacted at intervals during the next hundred years, yet, being in the nature of of things imprac ticable, they became dead letters and event ually disappeared from the statute books. The people in their multifarious public and private transactions being amenable to law, the assistance of a professional class whose specialty it was to know the laws and to be able to advise and speak for a clientage was a necessity, hence the existence of lawyers, and the impossibility of suppressing them. But, who were the lawyers of that period? For fully a century they seem " to fortune and to fame unknown," not one of them having attained to a notoriety or distinction worthy of a biographer. They could not have been barristers, nor counsellors at law, as there could not have been a practice, in the in fancy of the colony, sufficiently lucrative to attract men who were matriculates of the English bar. 1 Minor's Institutes Vol. IV., p. 168.