The Lawyer: a Pest or a Panacea? -drew Hamilton, the leader of the Pennsyl vania bar, eloquently contended that truth was a justification if the words of the libel were not scandalous or seditious. He won his case. Zenger was acquitted. Hamilton, we are told, was presented with the freedom of New York City and departed for his Philadelphia home, amid the firing of salutes in his honor. It was an honor well deserved, for he had won the first fight for the freedom of the press in America, thus anticipating by nearly half a century, the great victory of Erskine and Fox for the freedom of the press in England. So radical was the change in public senti ment towards law and lawyers, that Burke, in his great speech on Conciliation, named as one of the six capital sources of the fierce spirit of liberty among the colonists, the widespread taste for legal education. "In no country in the world," said he, "is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful, and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to Congress were lawyers." General Gage had reported he observed that all the. people in his gov ernment were lawyers or smatterers in law, and that in Boston they had been enabled by successful chicane wholly to evade manyparts of the most important penal laws of Parliament. This study of the law, added the philosophic statesman, "renders men acute, inquisitive, dextrous, prompt in at tack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill prin ciple in government only by an actual griev ance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the bad ness of the principle. They augur misgovcrnment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyrrany in every tainted breeze." It was not strange that the American colonists had ceased to look upon lawyers with suspicion, and had come to follow them
229
as leaders. The questions of vital import ance now were legal questions. Were the colonists taxable by a government in which they had no representation? Were their persons and property seizable under general warrants? Could the legality of an arrest be inquired into under the writ of habeas corpus? These questions involved a knowl edge not only of the constitutional history of the mother country, but of judicial pre cedents and of legal principles. Magna Charta, indeed, provided in express terms that no freeman should be taken or im prisoned, unless by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land; but it was the writ of habeas corpus, framed by the liberty-loving lawyers, and "rendered more actively remedial by the statute of Charles П.," that gave life and vigor to that famous clause of the Great Charter. In Old Eng land, it was John Hampden, the lawyer, who refused to pay the twenty shillings of ship money, because it was a tax imposed with out consent of Parliament. True, the de cision of the Royal judges was against him, but his sturdy defence of the legal rights of every subject made him the most popular man in England and cost King Charles his head. In New England, a century later, it was James Otis, the lawyer, who attacked the writs of assistance with such a wealth of legal learning, and such fiery eloquence, that the scene in which he figured in the old town house in Boston has been entitled the opening scene of the American Revolution. Such an impression did it make on John Adams, that he declared American inde pendence was then and there born. Accord ing to this authority, our great republic had its genesis not at Concord nor Bunker Hill, nor yet in Independence Hall at Philadel phia: but in a lawyer's speech in a lawsuit. Although the noble part played by lawyers in the great crises of constitutional history, among English-speaking peoples, is general ly acknowledged, the popular view of our
