The Lawyer : a Pest or a Panacea If these were the only criticisms upon the profession, we might dismiss them with the homely proverb, "No man e'er felt the halter draw With good opinion of the law;" or, we might add, of lawyers. But we are forced to admit that our profession rests un der other and more serious reproaches. Sir Thomas More gave voice to one of the most severe as well as one of the most specious of this sort, in his account of the imaginary institutions of Utopia. Lawyers were ex cluded from that fabled commonwealth, he assures us, because they were looked upon, as a class, whose profession it is to disguise matters as well as to arrest laws. There fore, the dwellers in that isle of fancy thought it much better that every man should plead his own cause and trust it to the judge, than to employ professional counsel, as the client does in other lands. By this means, we are told, "they both cut off many de lays and find out the truth more certainly." This phantasy of every man his own law yer; of a judiciary so honest, so astute to detect the truth, so capable of discovering the real principle involved in every litiga tion, that the public and rival presentation of the opposite sides by skilled lawyers, is not only unnecessary, but positively baneful, has enjoyed a great but undeserved popu larity. Several of our colonies were capti vated by it, and their early legislation has the true Utopian ring. Virginia, in 1645, un dertook to discourage lawyers by forbidding them to take fees. Massachusetts showed her distrust of the profession, in 1663, by ex cluding lawyers from membership in the "Great and General Court" of the province. The fundamental constitution of the Caro linas declared it a base and vile thing to plead for money or reward. It prohibited anyone but a near kinsman to plead an other's cause, until he had taken an oath in
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open court, that he had not directly or in directly bargained for money or other re ward, with the party for whose cause he was to plead. The result of this colonial legislation was quite different from that anticipated by its Utopian sponsors. It is admirably carica tured by Irving in Knickerbocker's New York. The redoubtable governor, Wouter Van Twiller, is the central figure of the pict ure,—the judge before whom each party pleads his own case and to whose enlight ened sense of justice the decision is com mitted. An important burgher of primitive New Amsterdam explains to the Governor that a fellow-burgher though largely in debted, refuses to come to a settlement. The Governor and Magistrate (for the judiciary had not yet been separated from the exe cutive) "called unto him his constable, and pulling out of his breeches pocket a huge jack-knife, dispatched it after the defendant as a summons, accompanied by his tobaccobox as a warrant." Brought into court by this summary, if primitive process, each party produced his books of account, plead his own cause, and, as we have said, trusted to the judge in true Utopian fashion. The sage Van Twiller "took the books, one after the other, and having poised them in his hands, and attentively counted over the leaves, fell straightway into a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour, without saying a word. At length, laying his finger beside his nose and shutting his eyes for a moment, with the air of a man who has just caught a subtle idea by the tail, he slowly took his pipe from his mouth, puffed forth •л column of tobacco smoke, and, with mar velous gravity and solemnity, pronounced his judgment. Having carefully counted over the leaves and weighed the books, it was found that one was just as thick and heavy as the other. Therefore, it was the final opinion of the court that the accounts were equally balanced; that the parties
