Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/421

 THE GREEN BAG removed to Howard County and tried at Ellicott City, some twelve miles from Balti more on the railroad. Instead of taking the cars, Mr. Bonaparte drove out to the Court House. His principal part in the trial was to make a speech to the jury, which, I was told the next day by a lawyer who heard it, impressed all present as dis playing unusual ability and force. The verdict was in favor of the defendant, and the plaintiff appealed, but the rulings of the lower court were affirmed by the Court of Appeals. After the trial, Mr. Bonaparte's senior highly complimented his speech, and took the occasion to warn him that the chief obstacle to his success at the Bar would be the great difficulty he would have in convincing people that he was seriously intending to undertake the practice of law as the future work of his life — for not many would be easily persuaded that a young man with his independent means would vol untarily undergo the drudgery and unre mitting toil required for success in his chosen profession. Perhaps the timeliness of some such warning was suggested by the unwonted sight of a young lawyer going to try his first case in his own carriage, with a pair of spirited horses and a liveried coach man, while almost every one else had relied upon the railroad cars and climbed up the Court House hill on foot! Whatever difficulty young Bonaparte may have met in convincing others of his being thoroughly in earnest in undertaking to engage in the practice of law, his own course of conduct never justified any doubt upon the subject, for he at once threw himself into his work with a persistency and deter mination which have never been relaxed in the slightest degree since. Some twenty years ago, I met at a sea side resort a prominent member of the Philadelphia Bar — then an old man — who told me how he had read for the Bar along with several companions in the office of the most distinguished Pennsylvania lawyer of his day, who was in the habit of

frequently coming into the room where his students were reading and saying to them in his most impressive manner, ' ' Young gen tlemen, never practise law to make money." Whether any such injunction was ever ex plicitly laid upon Mr. Bonaparte, I do not know, but I am quite certain that he has never disobeyed it. I must not be under stood as meaning by this that he ever prac tised law gratuitously — for like others, he always expects his clients to pay fees pro portioned to the importance and difficulty of the cases in which they retain him, when ever they are able to do so; but I do mean to say that he has always seemed to me to regard a faithful discharge of the duty to his client, imposed by his profession, as a far more important consideration than the amount of the pecuniary reward he expected to get for his services. I have never known him to refuse a case because the client was unable to pay him a retainer, or unlikely to be able to pay him a fee if he failed to win, nor has he ever to my knowledge, except once — and that was at my suggestion, because we both thought more favorably of our client's case than we did of him personally — contracted to undertake a case upon a contingent fee. When he first came to the Bar, his habit was to undertake every case that was offered, no matter who the plaintiff or who the de fendant might be, whenever he was first convinced that the suit was one the plaintiff had a moral right to bring, and that there existed reasonably fair legal grounds to sus tain his contention. In regard to the ac ceptance of cases brought him, he has al ways appeared to me to act upon the theory that as the law owes to every man, however poor or humble he may be, the fullest pro tection in his rights of person and property, an obligation is thereby imposed upon the Bar as a body to see to it that such pro tection shall be brought within the means and power of every one who really needs and seeks it in good faith. Assuming such obligation to exist, it is plain that in many