THE LAWYER: A PEST OR A PANACEA?' BY j RANCIS M. BURDICK, Professor in the School of Law, Columbia University.
IT is not inappropriate, 1 trust, upon an oc casion of this kind, to discover, if we can, the opinion which the world entertains of the legal profession, and to consider its ac curacy. That this opinion has often taken an uncomplimentary form must be admitted. One of the earliest expressions of this character, which has fallen under my notice, is that of Richard De Bury, Bishop of Dur ham, and Lord Chancellor of England, under Edward III. His views, set forth in the rather crabbed Latin of the fourteenth cen tury has been rendered into English as fol lows: "Lawyers indulge more in protracting litigation than in peace, and quote the law, not according to the intention of the legis lator, but violently twist his words to the purpose of their own machinations." Such criticism from a Lord Chancellor would seem, at first glance, to be entitled to seri ous consideration. It is to be remembered, however, that the English chancellor of that far away time was not a lawyer, but an ecclesiastic; and Bishop De Bury's translator notes that the church and the bar were not on good terms in those days. This was due to the fact, he tells us, that lawyers were often obliged to defend themselves and others against the rapacity of ecclesiastics. A more violent antipathy to our profes sion is attributed by Shakespeare to Dick the Butcher, in Henry VI., where he proposes to Jack Cade that the first thing they shall do, upon Cade's becoming king, is to kill all the lawyers. To which Cade responds, "Nay, and that I mean to do." But these two worthies are represented by the great dramatist as' arrant anarchists. All the realm was to be in common, declared Jack Cade, 1 An address at the annual meeting of the New Hamp shire Bar Association, held at Concord, February 29, '04.
and to drink small beer, after he became king, was to be made a felony. Naturally statesmen of such a stripe would hate law yers. Similar hostility has been evinced by great despots. The anecdote is told of Peter the Great, that on a visit to Westminster Hall, he was astonished by the imposing array of barristers and attorneys; and declared that he had had but two lawyers in all his realm, and one of them he had put to death. Napoleon, at St. Helena, characterized law suits as an absolute leprosy, a social cancer; and stigmatized lawyers as a class living upon the quarrels of others, and even stirring up disputes to promote their own interests. He virtually admitted, however, that he had not the courage of his convictions, while emperor, or he had not reached the point where he thought it wise to put into opera tion his plan for starving lawyers, by legisla ting that they should never receive fees, except when they gained causes. But, perhaps, the most picturesque indict ment of our profession is that found in Macaulay's radical war song of 1820: "Down with your Baileys and your Bests, Your Giffords and your Gurneys: We'll clear the island of the pests, Which mortals name attorneys." That these English radicals were not the sanest of thinkers, however, is apparent from the next stanza of the song, which runs as follows : "Down with your Sheriffs and your Mayors, Your Registrars and Proctors. We'll live without the lawyer's cares And die without the Doctor's."
