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. IN any country possessing constitutional, and of men risen to eminence and distinction representative, or responsible government-out of its ranks. 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 puisne, 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 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 10 the progress, or even on the destinies of his | SCARLETTS, the RAINES, the BROUGHAMS, country. 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 five pence 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 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. 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 66 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." * Vultum affabilem, jucundum, et benignum. The "Histoire Abrégée de l'Ordre des | had not issued until the outcry against the Avocats," published in Paris by Bouchier malpractices of ecclesiastics had become loud d'Argis, is a work of great interest, research, and general. The avocats clercs, Fleury and learning. It collects together all the tells us, had been guilty of many excesses; ordonnances and registers of the different and a Latin historian of the time, speaking parlements, whether metropolitan or local, rel- on the subject, says, "Multos habuit advoative to the profession, and all the arrets of catos ecclesiæ excommunicatos." In the earthe great magistrates which were binding on lier French juridical works, advocates are the French bar. This record of the bars of called "Plaidours," which is explained plaiFrance was followed by the more copious deurs, or conteurs, from whence may have volumes of Fournel, which brings down the arisen our own name of sergeants, counters, history of the order of advocates to a com- and pleaders. paratively late period. But independently of these two works, which treat directly, and at length, on the subject, there are a variety of others that shed much light on the history of the Bar, and of judicial institutions in France-such, for instance, as the " Dialogue des Avocats de Loisel," the works of D'Aguesseau, the letters on the profession of an advocate, by M. Camus, with the introductory discourse of M. Dupin, now President of the Chamber of Deputies; the "Treatise de l'Autorité Judicaire," by M. Henrion de Pansey, an edition of which was given to the public by M. Theophile Barrois; the collection of laws concerning the judicial organization of France, by M. Dupin; the memoirs of Berryer the elder, the father of the celebrated orator of the Chamber of Deputies, and many other publications not necessary here to name. From these and other sources, it can be easily demonstrated that when the Franks seized on Gaul, in the fifth century, the bar of France enjoyed the highest consideration. The conquerors were the first to proclaim the calling noble. Though under the first and second races, and, indeed, under the third race of the French kings, the bar in France did not enjoy much lustre or consideration, and eloquence as an art was wholly neglected, yet the capitulary of Charlemagne made honorable members of the profession. Admission to the bar was limited to mild and pacific men, fearing God and loving justice. In the earlier history of the French bar, as in the earlier history of our own, none were advocates but churchmen--nullus clericus nisi causidicus, was the order of the day. Cyprian, Augustine, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Ambrose, had in the first ages of the Christian church followed the profession with credit and success; and Saint-Germain, Bishop of Auxerre, had also been an advocate and learned jurisconsult. The prohibition of Honorius III., forbidding ecclesiastics to teach and study the civil law, like a similar prohibition of Alexander III., in 1179, The tracing of matters of this kind, though not devoid of a certain interest, is nevertheless more within the domain of the antiquary than of the practical lawyer. Some of the ordonnances of the French kings are, however, more than curious, if they be not occasionally edifying. Thus an ordonnance of Philip III. directs advocates only to undertake just causes. Such causes they are directed to defend diligently and faithfully; they are enjoined to abandon them so soon as they shall be assured they are unjust. Barristers refusing to take an oath embodying these regulations are interdicted practice, or, as we should say, disbarred. Another regulation of the French bar, which has never been adopted into England, notwithstanding our fondness for Norman customs, was a provision that no advocate should receive, as honorarium, a sum of more than thirty livres. In 1274, the advocate's oath of 1291 received in France important additions. Advocates were in the latter years forbidden to solicit delays, or falsely to interpret a rule or custom; and Fontaine and Beaumanoir tell us, that an advocate employed in any cause was not at liberty to abandon it at the solicitation of an adverse party who desired his neutrality. 66 In Dugdale's "Origines," in Madox's Exchequer," in Gilbert's "History of the Common Pleas," in Spelman, in William of Malmesbury, in Roger of Wendover, in Hoveden, in Glanville, in Coke's " 4 Institute," in Hale's" History of the Common Law," and in Reeves' interesting work, and also in "Fortescue de Laudibus Legum Angliæ," will be found much interesting matter relative to early English legal history, and the pleading of causes. But in details relative to the bar and their mode of life, the French beat us hollow, partly from the archives and ordonnances being better preserved, but principally from the circumstance that the French kings and magistrates legislated and directed more in detail concerning the profession, than the kings or not exceeding £5, whereas, in less than five centuries afterward, a lawyer may lay out £5000 in a library, and yet find it wanting in many works of reference and authority. The library of Mr. Swanston fills the whole of the ground floor and first story of the spacious house 51 Chancery-lane, formerly occupied by Mr. Sergeant Merewether, and a house adjoining incorporated with it; and the better portion of the house No. 9, Sergeants' Inn, Fleet street, was for only library of Mr. Sergeant, now Chief Justice Wilde. But these libraries, though very costly, and among the best in the profession, were and are far from containing everything necessary to a jurist, though both contained within their ample shelves nearly every work necessary to a practicing lawyer. For a century and a half after the treatise of Hengham Parva and Hengham Magna, which followed Glanville, Britton, and Fleta, the legal literature of England had not to boast of much addition, and it was not till Sir John Fortescue flourished that we had the treatise "De Laudibus Legum Angliæ," from which many things relating to the bar and legal history may be profitably gleaned. parliament of England. Before William had | riod we speak, for a sum under-certainly entirely subjugated England, he separated the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, confined the county court, from which the bishop was banished, to the cognizance of petty suits, and established a grand central tribunal for the whole realm, which should not only be a court of appeal, but in which all causes of importance should originate and be finally decided. This was the curia or aula regis, of which Odo was the first justiciar. The administration of justice in this court continued nearly on the same footing formerly filled with the legal, and possibly the eight reigns, extending over rather more than two centuries. Although, says Lord Campbell, the most recent authority on the subject, during the whole of this period the Aula Regis was preserved, yet, for convenience, causes, according to their different natures, were gradually assigned to different committees of it, to which may be traced the Court of King's Bench and of Common Pleas, the Exchequer and the Court of Chancery. In the earliest law-books, in Glanville, or Bracton, or Fleta, we find few or no details respecting the members of the bar. The earlier history of the bar must, in truth, be sought in the records of the inns of Court and of Chancery, in the biographies of eminent lawyers, in antiquarian works and county histories, in the pages of Fortescue, Dugdale, and Wood's "Athenæ Oxoniensis;" in Selden, in Clarendon, in Roger North, in Burnett's "Life of Hale," and in such biographies of eminent lawyers as are afforded to us by Holiday, by Peter, by Townsend, by Roscoe, by Welsby, by Brougham, by Twiss, by Romilly, and lastly, by John, Baron Campbell, a man who has risen from the humblest condition to high legal eminence, to the of fices of solicitor and attorney-general, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and ultimately --though this is but the accident of an accident to the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster, with a seat in the cabinet, as one of her Majesty's ministers. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, the library of a French lawyer consisted only of, 1, “Le Conseil de Pierre Fontaine à son Ami," written in 1243; 2, The" Coutumes et Usages de Beauvoisins;" 3, The "Assizes du Royaume de Hierusalem," which is a compilation of the laws, usages, and customs of France. About the same period, or even ten or twenty years later, a complete law library in England was formed of three works of Glanville, Bracton, and Fleta, which, in 1278, were the only authorities. These works might be purchased, at the pe But though the bar in England produced few books touching its own history, from the earliest ages, its members were recruited from men not merely of substance in a worldly sense, but of fortune and condition, as well as of learning. Before the order of advocates had acquired in France a social position or a locus standi very eminent-before the order was encouraged by St. Louis, or patronized by Philip VI., of the house of Valois, barristers and judges in England were important personages, and to finish your studies at an inn of court was deemed a necessary portion of polite learning. Though, therefore, it cannot be denied that the end of the reign of Philip de Valois was a brilliant epoch in the history of the French bar-though the recent services which so many of the order had rendered to the crown-though the union of the court to which they were attached-though the individual wealth and social position of the body-though their expenditure in a liberal and elegant hospitality, and their alliances with the great and powerful, gave to the French, at that epoch, a consideration apart from the respect and consideration which they derived from their learning and their eloquence, we are yet of opinion, that the bar of England, even thus |