Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/548

 THE AMERICAN LAWYER It has been recently stated by one who has a wide experience on the Bench of the Superior Court of Massachusetts that "the provisions of the statutes relating to em ployers' liability furnish grounds for prob ably one-quarter of the civil jury cases tried in court at the present day." This per centage is not normal. Such litigation smacks of maintenance. It suggests a reason for other states to follow the precedent of Alabama, where a statute was recently passed making it a misdemeanor for an attorney to employ runners to solicit practice, and requiring the public prosecuting officer, upon complaint of the Council of the State Bar Association, to institute proceedings for any violation of the statute. This statute is noteworthy, inasmuch as it makes criminal what before was dishonorable and unprofessional. A rule of ethics becomes a rule of, law. It is a warning to the ambulance chaser. It is a statutory acknowledgment of the dignity of the legal profession. It is a happy sign. The question is mooted in current litera ture whether a lawyer by virtue of his re tainer may violate, his duty as a citizen. It is a question raised by the laity. It is not discussed in the profession. In the courts there is a settled practice not to hear counsel argue "against a first principle re specting which there has never been any doubt." So this question is not arguable. No lawyer to-day accepts Brougham's impas sioned declaration of the duty of counsel to his client. The oath of allegiance takes precedence of the attorney's oath. Loyalty is the first duty of every citizen. Civic pride is above personal emolument. The government is more than the client. History shows that the advances of freedom and public rights have been promoted by lawyers in all times. In the time of the Civil War in England Sir Orlando Bridgman and Sir Geoffrey Palmer, retiring to the seclusion of the study betook themselves to conveyancing and invented resulting trusts and springing uses. They are not the ideals of the American lawyer.

Philosophy and oratory were the prepa ration of the Roman lawyer. To-day the fifteen thousand students in the United States preparing for admission to the Bar in more than one hundred law schools do not find these studies a vital part of the curriculum. And yet, says Sir Henry Maine, "Roman law is the source of the greatest part of the rules by which civil life is still governed in the laws of the western world." Another has said Roman law is written rea son. " Here," said Hilliard, standing amid the ruins of the Forum, "Here law had attained the dignity of a science while yet the Druids worshiped the mistletoe on the site of Westminster Hall." Integrity is an inherent part of the law yer. Without seeming honest lie cannot succeed; and the only way of seeming honest is to be honest, for in the words of Lord Chancellor Napier, "There is an idiom in truth which falsehood never can imitate." The law is a laborious profession. When Prescott published his "History of Ferdi nand and Isabella," Daniel Webster spoke of him as a comet which had blazed out upon the world in full splendor. And Franklin Dexter, then leader of the Boston Bar, said: "It has made him famous; and yet I have spent more time and labor on cases that are now forgotten than Prescott has bestowed on his history." The lawyer is not a popular favorite, in literature and on the stage his foibles are depicted. Happily there are no lawyers in Dante's " Inferno." Of all men, he is most independent. It is human to dislike superi ority. Brougham's assumption of universal knowledge aroused personal antagonism. Even Wordsworth's gentle pen was turned against him. In a pamphlet opposing his election to Parliament, the poet wrote of his boasted independence, "Independence is the explosive energy of conceit making blind havoc with expediency." Of all men he is most trusted. "I dis like the American people," said a foreign visitor, "but the individuals I have met are