The lawyer.
The Knight-Errant who rode forth, panoplied in burnished steel, to break the chains, lift the yoke, batter down the prison door of the captive, the weak, the oppressed, has been, whom?
The lawyer.
Great was Mirabeau, but he dreamt only of changing France into a constitutional monarchy, leaving Divine Right on the throne and hereditary Privilege in force.
It was Danton, the lawyer, who led the Revolution, and sketched the Democratic state, in which all the people should rule for the benefit of all.
It was the lawyer who led in the long, hard fight for Civil liberty in England; the lawyer who slew the monsters of her Criminal Code; the lawyer who armed the private citizen with school-book and ballot.
It was the lawyer who pleaded Ireland’s cause at the bar of Public Opinion, wrung from British intolerance Religious Freedom, compelled the recognition of the Irishman’s rights in Irish land, and so won upon the conscience and the fear of the ruling caste that the triumph of the Cause of Ireland has become a question of time rather than a matter of doubt.
In our own history, whose record is better than that of the lawyer?
Would our forefathers ever have gone to war with Great Britain had they awaited the lead of Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson and George Washington?
Never in the world.