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GN FERATI RE. SCIENCE, AND ART. .

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In any country possessing constitutional, representative, or responsible government in any country pretending even to a small amount of civilization, the rights, duties, and privileges of the Bar can never be held as of small account. A counselor learned in the law, admitted to plead at the bar, and there to take upon him the protection and defence of clients, is generally presumed to be a person of scholastic attainments, of disciplined intellect, of gentlemanly manners, and of unblemished character and reputation. To such men, in England and France, we entrust with confidence our characters, our fortunes, our lives; and often, also, have such men been called to argue great constitutional questions, and to plead in defence of our liberties. The Bar, in both countries, is the source and spring of justice. From that great body, the chancellors, the judges, chief and puisné, and many of the statesmen of England, are chosen. From that great body, in France, are selected the whole of the magistracy, the presidents of the different courts of Cassation and Premier Instance, the procurers and avocats généraux, and their substitutes, the chiefs of the Parquet, and that very numerous and very useful class of men called juges de paix. Thus the welfare of numberless individuals-indeed, of whole communities-depends upon the Bar,

VOL. XX. NO. IL

and of men risen to eminence and distinction out of its ranks.

Nothing is more gratifying to the mind. of man than success honorably and justly obtained; and where can there be a more honorable or a more splendid success than may be acquired in defending the innocent, in bringing the guilty to condign punishment-in unraveling the web of fraud, or in protecting the life, the liberty, the property, or the reputation of a client? In this respect, the successes of the Bar are more solid and more useful, present fewer regrets, and reminiscences more consolatory, than the successes of the hero, naval or military, whose renown is achieved at the cost, not merely of the enemy opposed to him, but of the lives and limbs of his own soldiers or sailors.

Independently of these considerations, the prominent position of the successful advocate, the place he fills in the mind and estimation of his fellow-citizens-the publicity given, in England and France, to his exertions-the suitableness and adaptability of his particular legal and forensic acquirements to the highest walks of public and political life-all point him out as a man who may acquire rank, fortune, titled station, political and moral power-as one who may, sooner or later, have an important influence on

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the progress, or even on the destinies of his | SCARLETTS, the RAINES, the BROUGHAMS,

country.

the DENMANS, the HORNES, the CAMPBELLS, the WILDES, the FOLLETTS, the MAULES, the THESIGERS, the ERLES, the JERVISES, the TALFOURDS, the COCKBURNS, in England-and in Ireland and Scotland, the DUQUERYS, PONSONBYS, CURRANS, PLUNKETTS, DOHERTYS, O'CONNELLS, LEFROYS, JACKSONS, O'LOGHLENS, PERRINS, WOULFES, JEFFREYS, MURRAYS, HOPES, and RUTHERFORDS, have been, or are, members either of the Imperial or Irish parliament, tends not a little to place them still more conspicuously in the eyes of the public.

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The Bars of England and Ireland are, independently of these consideratious, much in the eyes of the people. Their functions, whether in London or on Circuit, are exercised publicly, and in the open face of day. The courts of justice at Westminster, at Dublin, and at Edinburgh, and in every circuit town from York and Liverpool to Bala and Bodmin, are open to all the world. To these courts flock not merely attorneys and clients, but a learned and instructed bar, professional and recognized reporters, and the representatives of that fourth estate of the realm, the provincial and metropolitan press. To these courts also flock such of the gentry, commonalty, and general public, "pioneers and all," as desire to be either instructed, edified, or amused by the pleadings, the law arguments, the cross-examination of the witnesses, or the addresses to the jury of the counsel on either side. There is not in England, as in Austria, Austrian Italy, Prussia, Naples, and the states of the church, any concealment or mystery in English, Irish, or Scotch courts, and within four or five, or, at all events, within twelve or fourteen hours after any important civil or criminal trial is decided, the evidence, the speeches of counsel, and the summing up of the judge, with the verdict of the jury, are all together either in an evening or a morning paper, in the hands of any one who has fivepence at command, or who is disposed to spend a penny, three halfpence, or twopence, in the hiring of the best possible instructor on the matter. Reports thus given in a popular and attractive form are altogether independent of the notes of cases taken for the use of the profession-notes which form no inconsiderable portion of the young barrister's expenditure, and almost the whole of his professional reading. The immense publicity thus given to the labors of English lawyers, rather enhances than diminishes the interest with which their professional course is watched. Their conduct of great or remarkable causes, generally and individually, is now openly commented on and criticised in newspapers, daily and weekly, in magazines, and in reviews devoted to general politics and to general literature. The fact, too, that most of the leading barristers-as the MURRAYS, the PRATTS, the DUNNINGS, the THURLOWS, the PIGGOTTS, the GARROWS, the ERSKINES, the LAWS, the GIBBS, the PERCEVALS, the ROMILLYS, the ABRAHAM MOORES, the NOLANS, the WETHERELLS, the COPLEYS, the * Vultum affabilem, jucundum, et benignum.

Nevertheless, there is not, in the United Kingdom, as in France, any regular history of the Bar, or, as our neighbors on the other side of the Straits of Dover would say-a history of the order of advocates. Whilst among the dramatic and imaginative Gauls, ever famed as a peuple processif," and renowned, from the earliest times, as trumpeters, public criers, and advocates, there are many works touching forensic history, customs, manners, and discipline, such works in England exist not at all in a separate shape, and you are obliged, if they interest you, to collect the scattered details from general history, from biography, and from memoirs, or from those less interesting chroniclers, the year-books and the reporters; from Jenkins and Keilway, in the reigns of Edward I., II., and III.; from Anderson and Brooke, in Henry VIII.; to East and Campbell, in the reign of George III.; from Barnewall and Cresswell, in the reign of George IV.; to Craig and Phillips, to Adolphus and Ellis ; to Manning, Grainger, and Scott, and Welsby, Hurlstone, and Gordon, in the reign of Victoria.

Our neighbors, the French, have not merely interesting and learned histories of the bar, and a regular collection of the most celebrated discourses, revised, for the most part, by the speakers, made in all the great cases, but they have treatises de modo gestu et habitu quem habere debet advocatus. Few of the bar of England would possibly, at any timefewer at the present moment than any other -come up to the standard required in this scarce French tract. The countenance of the advocate should be open, frank, affable, and lively,* says the writer; he should not distort his countenance, overstretch his muscles, or bite his lips, for, quoth the authority," labia quaque torquere vel mordere turpe est."

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