Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/744

 THE BARS OF UNITED STATES AND ENGLAND ment, no heretic, excommunicate person, nor criminal, nor a man of religion, nor a woman, nor a beneficed clerk with cure of souls, nor a judge in the same cause, nor attainted of falsity against the right of his office." The right to audience before the Judges of the Courts of England was abso lute but it was derived from and conferred by his Inn of Court and the consideration of his professional conduct was a matter of the domestic control of the Inn from which he sprang, the association between the Judges and the Inns of Court lying only in this that the Judges had a right of visitation to the Inn, and in some cases a jurisdiction of appeal from the decision of ..the government of the Inn, termed its Bench of Masters. Thus as we have seen the advocate was not an officer of state or an official of the Royal Courts of Justice, but merely a trained and selected person to whom the Courts on the recommendation of his Inn of Court gave audience for the purpose of being informed by him in the course of his representation of his clients. Above all it was clear that the relationship between the advocate and his client was in no sense a contractual relationship. He was in no way able to be directly approached by his client, the actual litigant, but he received his instructions from the attorney for that client to whom he looked for the payment of his remuneration. This remu neration was a pure honorarium "which a counsellor cannot demand without doing wrong to his reputation." He had the compensating advantage of being free from any obligation in the way of legal respon sibility for negligence in the carrying out of his instructions. It may be well here to sum up the position of the advocate in England by the statement that throughout the whole, course of history (with the single exception of a statute with an isolated provision passed in the reign of Edward I (1275), the rights and duties of the advocate in the English courts have not been the

subject of statutory declaration or en forcement. A canon of the church, how ever, protected ecclesiastical advocates. Professional conduct therefore is entirely subject and subject only to the public opinion of the profession itself together with the disciplinary jurisdiction of his Inn of Court. There were no local Bars but side by side with the system of itinerant judges dating from Henry II, had sprung up Circuit Messes, loosely constituted associa tions of barristers following the judge on a particular circuit formed for good-fellow ship and for the purpose of maintaining in the confraternity a certain measure of dis cipline. From the whole body of barristers by the winnowing processes of favour, fortune, and fighting-force the judges of the crown were selected. Side by side with this structure, based on the four pillars of the Inns of Court, existed a totally different body of men, veritably officers of the Court, answerable to the Court for their conduct and admitted by one of the judges (the Master of the Rolls) after assurance of their fitness. So early as the statute IV. Henry IV, c. 18, it was enacted that attorneys should be examined by the judges and none admitted but such as were virtuous, learned and sworn to do their duty. Upon proof of misconduct they were struck off the Roll or register by order of the judges. Blackstone, after he has traced the evolution of the body through the Roman Law down to his own day proceeds, "By divers ancient statutes, whereof the first is statute Westminister II. c. 10. attorneys may be made to prose cute or defend any action in the absence of the parties to the suit. These attorneys are now formed into a regular corps. They are admitted into the execution of their office by the Superior Courts of Westminister Hall and are in all points officers of the respective courts to which they are admitted and as they have many privileges on account of their attendance there so they are pecu liarly subject to the censure and animad