and everlasting labor, if the American legis lator, ignorant and arrogant for the greater part, persists in swelling our annual and bien nial statute books with a mass of nonsense, immature and ill considered, with class legis lation, with the pet bills of impudent blocks who can scarcely frame a correct sentence, and with other varieties of unhatched stuff. Blackstone gives a picture of what a law maker should be, and there are few of his prototypes to be found in the American le gislature. It is one who has studied the laws of the past, of all countries, of all civiliza tions, and has made himself acquainted with the results wrought by these laws when ad ministered; one who is well posted upon the laws of the present, and who in framing a bill to become a law, will keep in sight this knowledge, to avoid the mistakes of the past and correct the evils of the present law. Until some such qualifications are exacted in the American lawmaker, our statute books will be crarnmed with stupid nonsense, and our reports with decisions reversing and modifying decisions not yet cold. There was an American legislator-elect who once visited a certain wise man, and told him that he had been duly elected a member of the legislature of his State, and with a certain smack of importance asked him what he should do, what bills he should frame to make his name immortal in the law of the land? The wise man laconically an swered : " Only this, — vote nay on every bill presented, and yea on every bill to repeal existing law, and earn your country's grat itude. There is too much law; the country is governed too much." It was an answer that was probably not appreciated, because it did not flatter the wisdom of the asker. Notwithstanding the errors and mistakes of the law, frequently commented upon by press and people, the fact remains that nine out of every ten, yea, ninety-nine out of every hundred, of the decisions of the courts of the country are based on good common-sense, intelligently distinguishing between right and wrong, regardless of tech
nicalities. It is the exception that a deci sion is rendered with the qualification that it is unjust, but must be so made on account of existing law. That justice and right are the embodi ments of the great mass of the decisions of the land is due in greatest measure to the crowning glory of American law as admin istered, — the judiciary, — an able, brainy, impartial, and unpurchasable judiciary. It is entirely of the decisions of courts of law we are speaking, and not of verdicts of juries. The truth is, the majority of the lawyers of the country use every device in their power to win their ends, exhaust every effort, before they give their cases to juries, and only adopt that method as a dernier ressort. The cause of this is the desire to avoid the awful uncertainty and insecurity that is more or less an element of every jury. It is the attorney with the gifted tongue that is the friend of juries; and he has good cause, because his friendship is reciprocated by the juries swayed by his eloquence, regardless of the legal merits of the case. From law to lawyers. What is a lawyer? "The consummate villain of the universe," "The finesse of trickery and cupidity," cries this and that one. Hold, will you? I have the floor, and repeat, What is a lawyer? He is an officer of the court, presumed to be learned in the law, whose duty it is to facili tate the administration of the law and the preservation of the rights of mankind. The mistake is made in imagining law and lawyers as separate and distinct from each other. The lawyer is a means to an end, and is the means provided by law to see that a right is protected or a wrong avenged. He is the sworn officer of the courts of law for this purpose. Lawyers as a body are being continually found fault with, blamed with innumerable vices they never have, ridiculed, held up to derision and contempt by the paragrapher and caricaturist, until the wonder is that there is a mortal with a right that has been violated who has the courage to enter the
