The Relative Influence of the Lawyer in Modern Life of mankind." The Constitution which brought order out of chaos and has made it possible for this great people to govern itself was the work of American lawyers, and it has been the American bar, sitting since the adoption of the Constitution as a quasi constitutional convention, which has for more than one hundred and twenty years builded upon the foundation of the Constitution of 1787 the great and noble super structure of our Federal system. Henry, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Hamilton, Webster, Clay, Lincoln and others of potent achievement all acquired their power and influence as members of the American bar. Masterful as it is, the law, neverthe less, is not a popular profession. As individuals, lawyers are generally re spected and honored. Perhaps no class of men is the recipient of greater social and political distinction. The lawyer's versatility, due to the wide range of his observation, his savoir faire, due to his intimate knowledge of human nature, have ever made him welcome as a friend, a guest and an adviser. But this does not affect the prejudice which most men feel towards the profession as such. Indeed there has been from generation to generation a persistent identification of the lawyer with His Satanic Majesty. This uncomplimentary analogy has had many variations. A century ago, when Napoleon was apparently planning an invasion of England, all classes and professions of Englishmen sprang to arms, and amongst others the lawyers of the Temple organized a regiment. The King deigned to review this regi ment. At the conclusion His Majesty sent for Erskine, its honorary Colonel, and asked him what he called his regiment, and Erskine replied that it as yet had no name, to which His
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Majesty replied, "Call it the Devil's Own." Heine tells us in a humorous poem that when he met the Devil he found him exceedingly well versed in law. An anonymous poet tells us that the Devil visited a court of law and sadly de parted, saying:— They've puzzled the Court with their villain ous cavil, And, I'm free to confess it, they've puzzled the Devil. My agents were right to let lawyers alone, If I had them they'd swindle me out of my throne. The greatest of all poets and the profoundest judge of human nature seems equally hostile to the profession, although it is always unsafe to impute to Shakspere a sentiment to which one of his characters gives expression. We re call for the moment Harry Hotspur's contemptuous remark:— For in these nice sharp quillets of the law, Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw. The supposed avarice of the profes sion is referred to by Mercutio when he says of his dream fairy, Queen Mab, that she gallops — O'er lawyers' fingers who straightway dream of fees. You may remember the satirical and altogether delightful parody upon the scholastic refinement and judicial Bunsbyism of the Elizabethan bench, which Shakspere, with remarkable audacity, inserted in the graveyard scene in "Ham let." A case had been tried, involving the question as to whether the estate of a suicide escheated. The Court did in dulge in some very supersubtle reason ing as to when the crime of suicide, which worked the escheat, was consum mated and whether the estate passed to the heirs before such consummation. In discussing Ophelia's chances of Chris tian burial, the gravedigger thus paro
