The Lawyer: a Pest or a Panacea? dinal principle of English jurisprudence on both sides of the Atlantic. The breadth and sweep of a great legal principle are admirably illustrated by the Dartmouth College case. By the Federal Constitution the States are forbidden to pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts. Did the charter of Dartmouth College con tain a contract between the State and the College corporation, was the important question in the case. Dartmouth College was the only corporation which was a party to the action; but by the decision of that one law suit, the rights of every private corpora tion were to be affected. Indeed, Sir Henry Maine pointed out, some years ago, that the decision was important to all English inves tors in American corporate securities, and "that the construction of the constitutional provision by the famous case had secured full play to the economic forces by which the achievement of cultivating the soil of the American continent has been performed; that it is the bulwark of American individual ism against socialistic fantasy; that until it is got rid of, communistic schemes have as much prospect of obtaining practical realizatirn in the United States as the vision of a cloud-cuckoo-borough to be built by the birds, between earth and sky." The farreaching nature of the issue then before the court, was clearly discerned by Mr. Webster, leading counsel for the college. At the close of an argument, perhaps one of the most brilliant and powerful ever addressed to the Supreme Court, the great advocate declared, with quivering lips and choked voice: "This, sir, ib my case. It is the case, not merely of ihat humble institution, it is the case of every college 5n our land. Sir, you may de stroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But if you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those great
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er lights of science, which for more than a century have thrown their radiance over our land. It is, sir, as I have said, a small col lege. And yet there are those who love it.'f Not often does a law suit possess the sweep and breadth and far-reaching influence of the Dartmouth College case. But the vast ma jority of law suits contribute something to wards the establishment or expansion or cor rection of an important legal rule. It is not given to many lawyers to act the dramatic and memorable part of Webster in that fam ous scene, when the wrapt attention and tear ful eyes of Chief Justice Marshall and his col leagues testified that the advocate had cap tured the court. But it is given to every lawyer of ability and character to leave his mark on the jurisprudence of his country. The great body of our law has been built uplittle by little from the accretions of the countless litigations, conducted by ordinary lawyers. It is to the efforts of this profes-. sion, composed chiefly of men unknown tt> fame, that the liberty of the citizen, the free dom of speech and of the press, the security of private property in English speaking landsare due. If any of my hearers, notwithstanding the evidence thus far adduced, are still disposed1 to hold with Napoleon, that law suits are a cancerous evil, and that the State should strive to starve lawyers rather than to en courage them, I would commend to them the careful study of a famous little book,—Ihering's Struggle for /-ate1. I do not know of a more original or instructive bit of writing in the whole range of legal literature. The central doctrine of this learned jurist's thesis is, that the end of law is peace; but that this end is attained in a community in exact pro portion as the legal sense of the citizen iskeen, alert and fearless. The author's most striking illustration is one which we should hardly expect a German jurist to employ— the British traveler. Now we know that the Briton is not a popular personage on the
