POLITICAL LAWYERS
A representative assembly which entirely lacked lawyers would be impoverished; but one in which they are the predominant, or even a very important element, is usually in its decline. It is strange that an order of men, who in their private and professional capacities are so admirable, should nevertheless produce baleful effects when they come to play too great a part in public affairs. Trusty friends, delightful companions, stricter perhaps than any other civil profession in all rules of honour, they are none the less, without seeking to be so, the worst enemies of representative institutions. The peculiar danger of personal monarchy is that it so easily submits to draw its inspiration from an adulatory priesthood, and the peculiar danger of that modern form of constitutional government which we call democracy, is that lawyers, with the most patriotic intentions, are so apt to undo it.
Lawyers see too much of life in one way, too little in another, to make them safe guides in practical matters. Their experience of human affairs is made up of an infinite number of scraps cut out of other people's lives. They learn and do hardly anything except through intermediaries. Their clients are introduced, not in person, but in the first instance, on paper—through the medium of solicitors' 'instructions.' Litigants appear at consultations in their counsel's chambers under the chaperonage of their attorneys; their case is considered; they receive advice. Then perhaps, if the issue comes into court, they appear once again, in the witness-box, and are there examined, cross-examined, and re-examined under that admirable system for the discovery of truth which is ordained in Anglo-Saxon countries, and which consists in turning, for the time being, nine people in every ten out of their true natures into hypnotised rabbits. Then the whole thing is ended, and the client disappears into the void from whence he came. What happens to him afterwards seldom reaches the ears of his former counsel. Whether the advice given to him in consultation has proved right or wrong in practice, rarely becomes known to the great man who gave it.
Plausibility, an alert eye for the technical trip or fall—the great qualities of an advocate—do not necessarily imply judgment of the most valuable sort outside courts of law. The farmer who manures, ploughs, harrows, sows, and rolls in his crop is punished in his income, if he has done any one of these things wrongly, or at the wrong season. The shopkeeper who blunders in his buying or his selling, or the manufacturer who makes things as they should not be made, suffers painful consequences to a certainty. His error pounds him relentlessly on the head. Not so the lawyer. His errors for the most part are visited on others. His own success or non-success is largely a matter of words and pose. If he is confident and adroit, the dulness of the jury or the senility of the bench can be made to appear, in the eyes of the worsted client, as the true causes of his defeat. And the misfortune is that in politics, which under its modern aspect is a trade very much akin to advocacy, there is a temptation, with all but the most patriotic lawyers, to turn to account at Westminster the skill which they have so laboriously acquired in the Temple.
Of course there have been, and will ever be, exceptions. Alexander Hamilton was a lawyer, though he was a soldier in the first instance. Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. But we should have to go back to the 'glorious revolution' of 1688 before we could find a parallel to either of these two in our own history. Until the last two decades England has never looked favourably on lawyer leaders. This was regarded by some as a national peculiarity; by others as a safeguard of our institutions. But by the beginning of the twentieth century it was clear that lawyers had succeeded in establishing their predominance in the higher walks of English politics, as thoroughly as they had already done wherever parliamentary government exists throughout the world.
MR. ASQUITH'S ORATORY
During this epoch, when everything was sacrificed to perspicuity and the avoidance of boredom, Mr. Asquith's utterances led the fashion. His ministry was composed to a large extent of politicians bred in the same profession and proficient in the same arts as himself; but he towered above them all, the supreme type of the lawyer-statesman.
His method was supremely skilful. In its own way it had the charm of perfect artistry, even though the product of the art was hardly more permanent than that of the cordon bleu who confections ices in fancy patterns. And not only was the method well suited to the taste of popular audiences, but equally so to the modern House of Commons. That body, also, was now much better educated in matters which can be learned out of newspapers and books; far more capable of expressing its meanings in well-chosen phrases arranged in a logical sequence; far more critical of words—if somewhat less observant of things—than it was during the greater part of the reign of Queen Victoria.
To a large extent the House of Commons consisted of persons with whom public utterance was a trade. There were lawyers in vast numbers, journalists, political organisers, and professional lecturers on a large variety of subjects. And even among the labour party, where we might have expected to find a corrective, the same tendency was at work, perhaps as strongly as in any other quarter. For although few types of mankind have a shrewder judgment between reality and dialectic than a thoroughly competent 'workman,' labour leaders were not chosen because they were first-class workmen, but because they happened to be effective speakers on the platform or at the committee table.
To a critic, looking on at the play from outside, Mr. Asquith's oratory appeared to lack heart and the instinct for reality; his leadership, the qualities of vigilance, steadfastness, and authority. He did not prevail by personal force, but by adroit confutation. His debating, as distinguished from his political, courage would have been admitted with few reservations even by an opponent. Few were so ready to meet their enemies in the gate of discussion. Few, if any, were so capable of retrieving the fortunes of their party—even when things looked blackest—if it were at all possible to accomplish this by the weapons of debate. But the medium must be debate—not action or counsel—if Mr. Asquith's pre-eminence was to assert itself. In debate he had all the confidence and valour of the maître d'armes, who knows himself to be the superior in skill of any fencer in his own school.