DUTY OF THE YOUNG COLORED LAWYER.
Address at the Commencement Exercises of the Law Department of Howard University at Washington, February 3, 1871.
Young Gentlemen, Graduates of the Law School:—
I am glad in listening to the exercises on this interesting occasion. They carry me back to early life, when I was a student at the Law School of Harvard University, as you have been students in the Law School of Howard University. I cannot think of those days without fondness. They were the happiest of my life. Nor do I doubt that hereafter you will look back with something of the same emotion to your student days.
There is happiness in the acquisition of knowledge, which surpasses all common joys. The student who feels that he is making daily progress, constantly learning something new, who sees the shadows by which he was originally surrounded gradually exchanged for an atmosphere of light, cannot fail to be happy. His toil becomes a delight, and all that he learns is a treasure,—with this difference from gold and silver, that it cannot be stolen or lost. It is a perpetual capital at compound interest. Therefore do I say, for the sake of happiness, and also for worldly good, must the young man be faithful in study.
Pardon me, if, while congratulating you upon the career you now commence, I make one or two practical suggestions, which I hope may not be without value.
In the first place, you must not cease your studies, now that you leave the Law School. You must be students always. Some there are who content themselves with what is called “an education,” and then cease their studies. This is a mistake. At college or school we acquire the elements of knowledge, and we learn also how to study,—but very little more. If to this be added the love of study, this is the beginning of success.
But your studies must not be confined to the Law; you must study other things. Your minds must be refined and elevated by Literature; your knowledge must be extended by Science. All great lawyers testify to the importance of these acquisitions. Probably most persons familiar with the law would recognize the venerable Horace Binney, of Philadelphia, as the living head of the profession in our country; but while he was engaged in practice, he was not more remarkable for profound learning in the Law than for various attainments in scholarship and science. The necessity of literature to the lawyer is illustrated by an anecdote of Lord Brougham, who, when Chancellor of England, was visited by the father of a young man just commencing his law studies, and asked what books he would especially recommend to the beginner. “Tell him to read Dante,” was the prompt reply. “But,” said the astonished father, “my son is beginning law.” “Yes,” said the Chancellor, “and I say tell him to read Dante. If he would be a good lawyer, he must be at home in literature.”
There is one other possession without which science, literature, and law, all in amplest measure, will be of small avail: it is Character. Would you succeed, you must deserve success; and this can only be by character. Cicero, in his work describing the orator, says that he must be a good man; that otherwise he cannot be a true orator.[268] This is heathen testimony worthy of constant memory. But the same may be said of the lawyer. Remember well, do not forget, you cannot be a good lawyer unless you are a good man. Nothing is more certain.