matter of mental and moral discipline. It marks, to a large degree, the limits both of personal and social duty.

Jean Jacques Rousseau has said that "the man and the citizen, whosoever he may be, has no other kind of property to put into society than himself: all his other property is there despite him.' But how best does one give himself? Certainly after learning first what he owes, under existing laws. He must pay, before he gives. He can give only what remains after his legal obligations are discharged. Any inquiry as to what those are, in a novel and doubtful case, is an invitation to examine the remotest foundations for their support. A lawyer has an opportunity in this for independent and original research such as seldom comes to those in other professions. It is part of his proper preparation for the formation of an opinion or the argument of a cause, and consequently the time spent upon it is, within reasonable limits, a legitimate subject of charge against his client.

Burke said of law that it is " a science that does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding, than all other kinds of learning put together." But he said also that "it is not apt, except in persons happily born, to open and liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion." Be this as it may, every lawyer is urged on by powerful considerations of business interest to broaden his views not only by metaphysical studies, but by seeking a wider acquaintance with general literature. In examining witnesses and dealing with judges and 1 Rousseau, Emile, 1772, Vol. II, p. 108.

juries he needs to be a close and quick student of their mental characteristics. He must know more than most men of the course of human conduct in respect to personal rights and wrongs. Reading good novels or poetry is not a bad way of studying psychology and acquiring the ability to put himself in another's place.

Another educative force to a lawyer is his special opportunities to take part in shaping policies of legislation. There are few laws that do not come from a lawyer's pen. There are fewer still that do not owe their enactment to a lawyer's influence. The maker of a legal change feels the dignity of his position. For all men, as Mr. Lecky has observed, there is a strong educational influence in legislation. The lawyers who frame or execute it naturally are the ones to profit by this influence most, and most promptly. It gives them a better appreciation of what law is and what it ought to be. It leads to authorship in a congenial field all the more effective because it is of an unambitious kind. The lawyers have short avenues to the public mind in magazine articles or newspaper interviews, and many take advantage of them.

Men whose professional duties would render it impossible for them to write long books, are quite capable of treating philosophical subjects in the form of short essays, and have in fact become conspicuous in these periodicals."

This fact, according to Lecky, tends to promote the spread of utilitarian philosophy, which he deems the basis of legislation.1

1 Lecky, History of European Morals, London, Vol. I, p. 131.

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As the lawyer may gain cultivation by helping to make law, so he may gain it by opposing the adoption of laws which is urged by others. He can see better than the members of any other class in the community the effects of an ill considered piece of legislation, and there is no American legislature that does not have before it many projects of that kind. The people, to some extent, have a right to rely on the bar to call attention to the objections which they perceive in them. James C. Carter has thus alluded to this duty and power of the bar in some of these respects:

Among the evils which oppress society, there are few greater than that caused by legislative expedients undertaken in ignorance of what the true nature and function of law are, and the effective remedy at least, there is no other - lies in an effort to correct this ignorance by knowledge." 1

3. The Opportunities of the Lawyer for Public Service and Social Advancement

Public service a natural duty. The lawyer is officially always a public servant. The necessity for a legal profession. The lawyer, a speaking statute. His natural opposition to absolute power. His function as an interpreter of laws. His altruistic work, as a public defender. His place in court. His place as a peace-maker. His place as a ruler; and as a framer of legislation. Preventive legislation. The lessening of the lawyer's social influence since de Tocqueville wrote.

Oliver Cromwell, in writing as to the studies which he wished his son to pursue, said that mathematics and

1 Carter, Law, its Origin, Growth and Function, p. 4.

history should be among them, "for such studies may fit him for public services, unto which every man is born." 1

The lawyer belongs to a profession which has made the most of this birthright, or rather, let us say, of this natural duty. Every member of it, as has been explained in the first section of this chapter, is actually in the public service. He adopts the profession with this in view. He knows that it has been created and privileged, presumably for the public good. A distinguished member of the New Jersey bar (Courtlandt Parker), in an address given in 1881 before the Law School of Columbia University, said that "the motive for the practice of law the controlling and directing motive should be a desire of usefulness to our fellowmen, in the capacity of a minister of justice, a manager, and a part of the machinery of civilized society." This machinery is always running. The workshop of the State is open, day and night. The lawyer's part in it is not determined by what he does visibly in the public eye. Coleridge was wrong when, in his Table Talk, he declared that law is a profession inferior to the ministry because it is only necessary for some at some times, while the minister's work is addressed to something necessary for all, at all times. It is necessary for all at all times that the forces for good government should be maintained everywhere in full and constant action. The uses and opportunities of the legal profession are

1 MSS. letter owned by John Forster, Letters of Charles E. Norton, Boston, 1913, Vol. I, p. 321.

not to be measured by what it does actively, so much as by what it does passively and unobserved.

It assures the people that an agency of a public character exists which is always near at hand and ready to assure a public remedy for any private wrongs. If in a country like ours there were no lawyers, there would be no safety for business enterprise, and little personal security. In these directions every lawyer is worth ten policemen. He exists to protect the social order. His usefulness to the community therefore reaches far beyond the particular sphere of his professional efforts. It lies primarily, if not mainly, in his being one of a class always standing ready to serve the public in securing the benefits of living under the rule of law.

The good of a policeman is measured less by the number of arrests which he may make, or disorders which he may suppress by his active interference, than by his being within call, upon his beat, ready to intervene for the protection of any legal rights, should need arise. The good of a lawyer lies in what he might do, almost as much as in what he does. The bar, by his presence in it, is or ought to be a better agency for maintaining the interests of justice. He makes the battalions heavier that are readier to act, when those interests are imperiled.

Law moves with irresistible force, but it must first be set in motion by somebody, and by somebody whose business it is to do this.

Cicero quotes as a proverbial saying in his day, that the magistrate is a speaking statute, but a statute is a