Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 3, March 1852

by Various

Let us take one of our young attorneys, and follow him up, year by year, and step by step, to the Halls of Congress, and see how he gets there, and what he is bound to do—for he can do nothing else—after he gets there.

In the first place, it should be borne in mind, that the lawyers we send to our legislative bodies, are not often the able, nor even the ablest of their class—I speak of them as lawyers only, and not as Orators, or Statesmen, or Scholars. They cannot afford to serve the people for the day wages that your stripling, or blockhead of an attorney, who lives only from hand to mouth, would snap at. He who can have a hundred dollars for a speech, will never make speeches at two or three dollars a-day, in our State Legislatures, nor be satisfied with eight dollars a-day in Congress.

And these youngsters of the bar, these third and fourth-rate lawyers, who are held to be good enough for legislators, because they cannot support themselves by their profession, how are they trained for that business?

You first hear of them in bar-rooms and bowling-alleys; then at ward-caucuses; and then at all sorts of gatherings where they may be allowed to try themselves and their hearers; and then at conventions or town-meetings: and then, after being defeated half a dozen times, perhaps, till it is acknowledged that if they are not elected, they are ruined forever, they get pushed, head-foremost, into the State Legislature.

And once there, what shall they do?—how shall they manage to become notorious—or distinguished? They must contrive to be talked about in the newspapers; to be heartily abused by somebody, that they may heartily be praised by somebody else belonging to another perish. Their names at least will be mentioned, and grow more and more familiar every day to the public ear, until they become a sort of household words; or it may be a rallying cry, by the simple force of repetition, like proverbs, or slang-phrases. “Why do you take every opportunity of calling yourself an honest man?” said a neighbor to another of doubtful reputation. “Why, bless your simple heart,” was the reply, “don’t you see that I am laying a foundation for what is called public opinion; and that after a few years, when my character is fairly established, the origin of the belief will be forgotten.” So with your newspaper characters. Idols of the day—at the end of a few months, at most, they are dust and ashes; and the people begin to wonder at themselves that they should ever have been made such fools of.

But how shall they manage to be talked about in the newspapers, and most gloriously abused? There is only one way. They must make speeches—if they cannot make speeches, they may as well give up the ghost, and be gathered to their fathers; for most assuredly, (whatever may be their worth, or strength, or talents, in every other way,) if they cannot make speeches, not a man of them will ever be remembered—long enough to be forgotten. And they must make long speeches—the longer the better; and frequent speeches—the more frequent the better; and be their own correspondents and report themselves for the newspapers, with tart replies and eloquent outbreaks, and happy illustrations, never uttered, nor dreamt of till the unpremeditated battle was over, like some that were made by Demosthenes himself, years after the occasion had passed by, and there was nobody alive to contradict him; or like the celebrated oration of Cicero against Cataline.

But they cannot make speeches about nothing at all—at least such is my present opinion—it may be qualified hereafter, and I am well aware that common experience would appear to be against me, and that much may be said upon both sides, as well as upon neither side, in such a question. They must have something to work with—and to talk about: something, too, which is likely to make a noise out of doors; to set people together by the ears; to astonish them, and to give them a good excuse for fretting, and scolding, and worrying. In other words, they must introduce a new law—the more absurd the better—or attack an old law, the older the better; and seek to modify it, or to change or repeal it.

And what is the result? Just this; that every Legislative Hall in the land, from the least to the greatest, from the lowest to the highest, becomes a debating-school; and the business of the whole Country is postponed, month after month, and year after year, to the very last days of the session, and then hurried through—just a little too late, wherever the national honor is deeply concerned, as in the case of French spoliations, and other honest debts owed by the Government to the People—with a precipitation so hazardous and shameful, that much of the little time left in future sessions must be employed in correcting the blunders of the past: and all for what?—merely that the Lawyers may be heard month after month, and have long speeches that were never delivered, or when delivered, not heard, reported piecemeal, and paragraph by paragraph, in perhaps two or three thousand newspapers—that are forgotten before the next sun goes down, and literally “perish in the using.”

Nor does the mischief stop here. The whole business of the country is hung up—and sessions protracted for months—and millions upon millions wasted year after year, of the people’s money, upon what, after all, are nothing more—and there could not well be any thing less—than electioneering speeches.

And then just look at the character of our legislation. Was there ever any thing to be compared with it, for instability, for uncertainty, for inadequacy, for superabundance, and for what my Lord Coke would call a “tending to infiniteness!” I acknowledge, with pride, that our Revised Statutes, all circumstances taken into consideration, are often quite remarkable for the common sense of their language, and for clearness—wherever common sense and clearness were possible under the established rules of interpretation. But generally speaking, what is it? “Unstable as water—thou shall not excel!” is written upon the great body of our statute law, year after year, and generation after generation.