Many qualities are requisite to success in the lawyer; but no one is more so, than the spirit of honor and integrity on which I have insisted. All the knowledge of legal doctrines, whether theoretical or practical, all the habits of study, all the strength of a deep and penetrating judgment, must be blended with a mellowness of manners, to be acquired only in the school of life, and with a fertility of genius, which is the gift of nature alone. He must be able at once to influence the passions of a jury, and to convince the understanding of the judge; he must appear in all the varied characters of the abstract reasoner and the lively wit, the accurate definer and the polished rhetorician. The dignity of wisdom and the facility of business, the nervousness of eloquence and the easy familiarity of colloquy, must take their turns in the varieties of his practice. All that is excellent in general knowledge, and refined in legal intelligence, must be called in to complete the character of the finished advocate in our courts.

The lawyer, then, to gain the summit of legal excellence, must unite the most opposite qualities, and be capable of exercising them; he must have a quick discernment, and yet a solid understanding; he must not be destitute of imagination, yet he must possess a sound judgment; he must know books, yet be well learned in mankind; the subtile technicalities of law, and the enlarged beauties of classical learning; the solitary habits of study and the easy refinements of active life, must equally distinguish him. In fine, he must unite in himself all those noble and useful qualities, by which he may at once command the attention of the acute and the learned, and render himself intelligible to the most ordinary capacity. In the accomplished lawyer, this combination of rare qualities, must be crowned with a corresponding sense of honor, probity, and integrity.

A rare combination of qualities, then, physical, moral, social, and intellectual, is requisite to the accomplished lawyer, — the spirit of the law when unsophisticated, and its main tendency when unperverted, are, to elevate the moral character; still there are other tendencies, which, unless they are known and guarded against, will degrade the personal and professional character of the lawyer. All lawyers are not men of elevated moral sentiments and feelings. Some lawyers may understand the prin

ciples of law well enough; but they are wrapped up in the terms of art, and the technicalities of practice, and greatly neglect the life, spirit, and tendency of the law which they study and apply. To them, the law is nothing more than a dull piece of mechanism. It has no life, no elevation, no spirit, no principle of philosophy, no connexion with genius and liberal learning. A spirit of subtilty and finesse, too, in another class of lawyers, has often been alleged to disgrace the bar. Every honest advocate will be anxious to give as little occasion as possible to such an accusation. "He will recollect," says Sir James Mackintosh, "that those intricacies, which unavoidably obscure the legal science, have had their source in no honorable propensities of the human mind, and that he will, therefore, be doing a great wrong in adding to them." There is no pride so unworthy of an enlightened mind, as that which delights itself with the needless intricacies of any science; much less is it excusable in availing itself of the obscurity that enshrouds the law; a science that ought to be most clear, and that will cease to be so, only in proportion as the sentiments and manners of men degenerate from the standard of purity. The motives that induce this kind of pride are selfish and unjust; since he must be selfish and unjust, who labors to obscure knowledge rather than to diffuse and explain it.

The study and practice of the law, moreover, have been frequently charged with inducing narrowness and contractedness of mind. Sir James Mackintosh often admonishes the lawyer of the importance of cherishing enlarged sentiments, and of aiming at expansion as well as strength of mind. And, without directly charging any part of the profession with narrowness of mind, he still says, "A little mind is obviously distinguished from a great mind by its continued association with cases of a trifling import, which, by imperceptible degrees, acquire an ascendency over it, and at length appear before it in a false light, and clothed with an unreal importance. Thus secured in their possession, they communicate their debasing influence, and confine the faculties of the mind to a very limited sphere. This will appear in every sentiment and in every action of the man who is thus enslaved; and

Study and Practice of the Law, p. 249.

the only distinction that can possibly exist between this character, when seen only in private, and when exhibited in public life, is, that the latter will be more conspicuously degraded and unhappy. It must be considered, therefore, as a circumstance of peculiar infelicity, when a man, who has to sustain the character of an advocate in the courts of justice of a free and enlightened country, and in an age, too, of great political and philosophical refinement, has permitted his ideas to range into no sphere beyond that in which he himself has moved; when he has contemplated no situations but those of his own confined circle, and investigated no system beyond the technicalities of business. From such circumstances what unhappy consequences will not ensue ? Irregular positions, unjust conclusions, uncertain notions of truth, and mutilated conceptions of justice, are evils of no inferior kind, and very closely follow so deplorable a state of mind." *

Every profession has its unworthy members, unworthy in respect to qualifications, character, general spirit, intentions, purposes, &c., and the law is not without them. The smallest temptation of interest, passion, or prejudice, suffices to induce them to pervert and frustrate justice, in every way known to the unscrupulous and the crafty. They are an instructive instance of the danger of literary and professional education, when not accompanied and directed by moral principle. A resort to subtilty and finesse, and the use of technical terms and formalities, to obscure the law and obstruct justice, have brought no small share of public reproach on a profession, the great majority of whose members are men of elevated moral sentiments, and of exemplary character. All reproach uttered against entire classes of men is essentially unjust. This is true of lawyers as well as other classes of men ; and the reproach, justly deserved by a small number, has extended itself, in a considerable measure, to the entire profession. Sir James Mackintosh prefers high claims in their behalf, and congratulates his country "upon the general morality of its legal professors. It may be reckoned," continues he, "as one of its brightest honors, that there is not only a great accumulation of learning and talent at this moment in its courts of justice, but

also that they are crowded by men, who, whatever may be their opinions in other respects, possess the soundest principles of moral truth.” *

There is said to be a striking difference between the education and course of life of an American and an English lawyer, which would, it is affirmed, disqualify the latter from maintaining in our courts a successful contest with the former. In England, the complexity of the system, its antiquated, mysterious, and perplexing rules, with their endless exceptions; its forced constructions, and almost invisible distinctions, have a tendency to improve the lawyer at the expense of the man; whilst, in this country, other and more exalting circumstances improve the man, though, perhaps, somewhat at the expense of the more technical practitioner. As soon as the American lawyer attains to high reputation, he is enticed into public life, when the contentions of politics, and the interests of States become the objects of his attention, to the enlargement of his intellectual powers. Instead of sinking down into the little lawyer, whose ideas are imprisoned within the bounds of a single branch of jurisprudence, and whose contracted intellect can, after a time, comprehend nothing that is not embraced in his digests, he looks abroad, he perceives something which he regards as better than mere technical learning, and resolves to attain it; he soars aloft; and, though he may fall short of his high aim, he seldom fails to reach an elevation far beyond the fondest aspirations of any professional attendant in Westminster Hall. He, who, in Great Britain, devotes himself to the profession, becomes acute, subtile, and learned in that department of the science which he may have selected, whilst in every thing else he is, with few exceptions, decidedly ignorant ; here, on the contrary, he becomes a man of business, an acute debater, a respectable legislator, as well as a general lawyer. In England, they complain that the law is a jealous mistress, depriving of her favors all who remit their attentions, or who address them even incidentally to other objects. Polite letters are proscribed, the pernicious influence of poetry would blast their

*Study and Practice of the Law, p. 245.

prospects for ever, and even history is to be shunned as warring against jurisprudence.*

This is a strong view taken in behalf of American, compared with British lawyers; but Mr. Justice Story, of the Supreme Court of the United States, anticipates a still higher character for future American lawyers, arising from the influence of our institutions. "The establishment of the National Government," says he, "and of Courts to exercise its constitutional jurisdiction, will, it is to be hoped, operate with a salutary influence. Dealing, as such courts must, in questions of a public nature; such as concern the law of nations, and the general rights and duties of foreign nations; such as respect the domestic relations of the States with each other, and with the general government; such as treat of the great doctrines of prize and maritime law; such as involve the discussion of grave constitutional powers and authorities; it is natural to expect, that these Courts will attract the ambition of some of the ablest lawyers in the different States, with a view both to fame and fortune. And thus, perhaps, the foundations may be laid for a character of excellence and professional ability, more various and exalted than has hitherto belonged to any bar under the auspices of the common law; a character in which minute knowledge of local law will be combined with the most profound attainments in general jurisprudence, and with that instructive eloquence, which never soars so high, or touches so potently, as when it grasps principles, which fix the destiny of nations, or strike down to the very roots of civil polity.t

The advocate must guard against prostituting his talents and character on the side of notorious wrong, he must not rashly expose himself to the imputation of being rendered blind to enor mities by the desire of gain, he must not involve himself, by haste and inadvertence, in transactions, without previous inquiry into the circumstances attending them, he must not lay himself open to the suspicion of engaging in a cause from motives of personal pique and animosity to the adverse party, without in

* See the substance of this paragraph in "The Southern Review," for May 1829, Art. 7, ascribed to the Hon. Samuel Prioleau of South Carolina.

+ Address before the Suffolk Bar, in "Miscellaneous Writings," p. 426.