Between the years 1750 and 1775, more than a hundred and fifty young men from the colonies were admitted to one of the four Inns of Court and became educated lawyers with the purpose of entering the profession in their native colonies. How far the presence of such a class of educated lawyers through the colonies contributed to the resentment against the stupidity and injustice of the English colonial policy which brought about the Revolution, cannot be estimated exactly; but certain it is that the preparation of the lawyers who were then in their prime appears to have been Providential interference in behalf of the people of the United States. Never in history has the profession of the law received so great a harvest of profound students of the constitutional principles of government as did our country at this time. Our lawyers signed the Declaration of Independence, served in the Continental Congress, acted as delegates to the Constitutional Convention, and met in the various conventions called by the states to consider the ratification of that great instrument. They not only knew that common law, but they had studied closely the political history of Greece and Rome, and were familiar with the principles of government as set forth by Montesquieu and Adam Smith.
It was the American Bar that gave to the people of the United States such lawyers as Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams, James Otis, Samuel Chase, Samuel Adams, Roger Sherman, Oliver Ellsworth, James Wilson, Edmund Randolph and many others not less learned and brilliant, to establish their liberties, frame the limitations of their government and care for the protection of individual rights. The same Bar furnished a little later that lawyer and judge, John Marshall, whose interpretation of the Constitution was as important in its beneficent effect as its original framing. That Bar not only helped largely in constructing the ship of state but it was also most instrumental in launching it on a triumphant and useful course through a century and a quarter. The profound gratitude of succeeding generations owing to such a Bar ought never to be dimmed by partisan or misguided diatribes upon lawyers and judges.
CHAPTER II
LEGAL ETHICS
I have heard the utility of legal ethics denied. It is said that the rules in legal ethics are the same as the moral rules that govern men in every branch of society and in every profession—except as there may be certain conventions as to professional etiquette—and that if a man is honest, there ought to be no difficulty in his following the right course in the discharge of his professional duties. If a man is lacking in probity of character, it is said the discussion of legal ethics will do him no particular good, because if he is tempted to a crooked path or an unjust act by his pecuniary interest, he will yield, and neither lectures on ethics nor the establishment of an ethical code will make him good; whereas the upright man will either not be so tempted, or should he be, he will clearly perceive the necessity for resisting the temptation.
In the course of my consideration of this subject, I looked into a text-book on moral philosophy and the general system of ethics with the hope that I might find something there that would suggest, by analogy, a proper treatment of the subject in hand. I consulted Paulsen's "A System of Ethics." The analogy between moral philosophy and legal ethics is not very close, but I found a passage or two bearing on this very issue, which it seems to me might not be inappropriately quoted here. In the conclusion of his introduction, Paulsen says:
"Let me say a word concerning the practical value of ethics. Can ethics be a practical science, not only in the sense that it deals with practice, but that it influences practice? This was its original purpose. 'It is the function of ethics,' says Aristotle, 'to act, not only to theorize.'"
Paulsen refers to the fact that Schopenhauer takes a different view: