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The Green Bag

called "the embodied Bar of Massa chusetts Bay." He found the practice of law but lean pickings and described himself as being supported largely as a scrivener "in writing petty things." Finally at a Quarter Court in Septem ber, 1639, it was ordered that "Mr. Thomas Lechford, for going to the Jewry and pleading with them out of court is debarred from pleading any main cause hereafter unless his own and admonished not to presume to meddle beyond what he shall be called to by the court." Shortly after this he re turned to England. The people of Massachusetts were anxious to check with a stern hand the practice of law. In 1656 the General Court enacted that: — This court taking into consideration the great charge resting upon the colony by reason of the many and tedious discourses and pleadings in court, both of plaintiff and defendant, as also the readiness of many to prosecute suits in law for small matters; it is therefore ordered by this court and the authority thereof that when any plaintiff or defendant shall plead by himself or his attorney for a longer time than one hour, the party that is sentenced or condemned shall pay twenty shillings for every hour so pleading more than the common fees appointed by the court for the entrance of actions, to be added to the execution for the use of the country.

It was therefore not to be wondered at that there was such a dearth of trained lawyers in the colony that in 1689, Edward Randolph, Secretary to Gov ernor Andros, wrote to England: — I have wrote you the want we have of two, or three, honest attorneys (if any such thing in nature). We have but two; one is West's creature — came with him from New York, and drives all before him. He also takes ex travagant fees, and for want of more, the coun try cannot avoid coming to him so that we had better be quite without them, than not to have more. I have wrote Mr. Blackthwaite the great necessity of judges from England.

It was not until 1701 that the prac tice of law bacame dignified as a regu

lar profession through the requirement by statute of an oath for all attorneys admitted by the courts as follows: — You shall do no falsehood, nor consent to any to be done in the court, and if you know of any to be done you shall give knowledge thereof to the Justices of the Court, or some of them that it may be reformed. You shall not wittingly and willingly promote, sue or procure to be sued any false or unlawful suit, nor give aid or con sent to the same. You shall delay no man for lucre or malice, but you shall use yourself in the office of an attorney within the court according to the best of your learning and discretion, and with all good fidelity as well to the courts as to your clients.

Still the number of practising lawyers was so small that as late as 1715 a statute was enacted that: No person shall entertain more than two of the sworn allowed attorneys at law, that the adverse party may have liberty to retain others of them to assist him, upon his tender of the established fee, which they may not refuse.

After the Revolution, business and finances were much disturbed, and the process of adjusting the community to new conditions was slow and difficult. Litigation, foreclosures of mortgages, and collecting debts kept the courts busy and proved very irritating for the public at large. People attributed all their misfortunes to the lawyers, and began to express themselves in no un certain terms. The town of Braintree in public meeting in 1786 voted that: — We humbly request that there may be such laws compiled as may crush or at least put a proper check or restraint on that order of Gentle men denominated Lawyers, the completion of whose modern conduct appears to us to tend rather to the destruction than the preservation of the town.

Dedham instructed its representatives in the Legislature : — We are not inattentive to the almost univer sally prevailing complaints against the practice of the order of lawyers; and many of us now sen sibly feel the effects of their unreasonable and