ADDRESS.
Neither duty nor inclination will permit me to take leave of you, young gentlemen, without offering a few remarks, of general application to the subject of our late studies.
We part, perhaps to meet no more. Some of you go into the active business of life, some to pursue your researches under other guidance. To both alike, my experience may enable me to suggest thoughts, and to offer advice, which may be found of some practical value.
Whether your immediate destination is to the bar or the closet, you will alike find the necessity of continuing your studies. To give them such a direction as may be profitable and honorable to you, is my sole remaining duty.
There are many branches of the law which you will still find time to investigate at leisure. Many years will probably elapse, before you will be called to take the sole management of any case involving valuable rights or intricate questions. The land law, and the perplexing minutiæ of chancery jurisdiction, will be of this description. When engaged in such cases, you will commonly find yourself associated with older and abler counsel, from whom you will then obtain, at a glance, more insight into these difficult subjects than I have been able to afford. Under such guidance, you will have opportunities to investigate the law, with an eye to its application to your case. You will then see the practical value of the principles with which you have been made acquainted, and may execute your first tasks in that line, as successfully as if you were already imbued with every thing but that knowledge which nothing but study and practice combined can afford.
But though, in regard to matters of this sort, a general acquaintance with the grand principles of the law is as much as you can be expected to carry to the bar, there are other duties which you must assume, in a complete state of preparation. Let me particularize a few of these.
You will find it then of the utmost importance, to be thoroughly acquainted with the science of pleading. I have not concealed from you that the loose practice of our courts dispenses habitually with many of its rules, and has done much to confuse them all. But they still retain all their truth, all their reasonableness, and much of their authority. The courtesy of the bar will indeed save you from the consequences of any mistake you may make in the outset. But though this may screen your errors from the public eye, they will not escape the animadversion of your brethren. They will be prevented from forming such an estimate of your acquirements, as will lead them to recommend you to their clients, in the hope of obtaining from you valuable aid. It is by such recommendations that young men most frequently gain opportunities to make an advantageous display of talent, and an introduction into that sort of business which is, at once, a source of honor and profit.
It sometimes happens, (though, to the credit of the profession such occurrences are rare,) that a young man, on his first appearance at the bar, encounters adversaries who do not extend to him the forbearance which youth has a right to expect. He is taken at a disadvantage. His want of experience and readiness lays him open to a more practised opponent, who ungenerously strikes a blow by which his client is injured, and he himself is brought into disrepute. To him who is really deficient in capacity or acquirement, such an attack is sometimes fatal. To him who, on a fit occasion can retaliate on his adversary, it is of decisive advantage. Mankind are generally disposed to take sides with the weak and injured party, and to visit with their indignation any ungenerous abuse of accidental advantages. A young man therefore, thus assailed, is sure to have with him the sympathy of the profession and of the public. They look, for a time at least, with interest to his course. They are impatient to see him redress himself; and, until he has done so, all the rules of comity and forbearance which generally regulate the practice, are suspended in his favor. He is free to take advantages of his ungenerous assailant, which, under other circumstances would be denounced as ungentlemanly. And they would be so, because they would be in violation of the covenanted rules of the profession. But between him and his adversary there is no such covenant. A state of war abrogates all treaties. It follows that all the maxims of courtesy which forbid any advantage to be taken of slips in pleading, do not restrain him; and he is free to hold the other up to all the strictness of the law. It is expected he should do so. If he does not, it is concluded that he does not know how. But if he has once carefully studied the science and made himself acquainted with its principles, he stands on strong ground, and sooner or later his triumph is sure. The older and more hackneyed his adversary, the greater his advantage; for it is true in law, as in morals, that evil practice vitiates the understanding. The habit of loose pleading unsettles the knowledge of the rules and principles of pleading, and many nice technicalities are totally forgotten. There is not, for example, one old county-court lawyer in a hundred, who remembers that $100 means nothing in pleading, and that a declaration in which the sum should be no otherwise expressed, would be so bad as to make it doubtful whether even the sovereign panacea of our late Statute of Jeofails would cure it. But though this be doubtful, there is no doubt that, on demurrer, it would be fatal. A demurrer then, being filed and submitted sub silentio, it is probable that such a defect would escape even the eye of the court. In that case a reversal of the judgment would be sure, and a triumph would be gained that would gratify the profession, and command the admiration of the multitude.
A thousand cases of the same sort might be suggested, where an old practitioner, though on his guard, (as he must be against one whom he has provoked to retaliation,) would, from a mere defect of memory, or the established influence of vicious practice, fall into blunders which would place him at the mercy of an adversary who has his learning more fresh about him. How many, for example, will remember where to stop the defence, in drawing a plea in abatement, or to the jurisdiction of the court? How many ever think of the necessity of entitling their pleadings? How many know how to take advantage of this defect, even when it occurs to them?