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The Green Bag.

Celtic root, " clain," signifying "suit," but for which malevolence will suggest a more ob vious meaning. As for the function, a writer, from whom Le Berquier quotes, calls it "con temporary with the first law-suit and the first court," but not with strict correctness. There never was a country without law-suits; but there have been and are countries without advocates. In Turkey, for instance, there are none now. "Advocacy is, in fact," says M. le Ber quier, "the growth of liberty; and the bar, a body of men springing up in a free country, self-born and self-governed, called into gradual existence by the gradually in creasing complication of social relations, till out of the rude speakers who pleaded their own cause before the Mosaic tribunals, grew the barristers of the present day. Where there has been freedom, there have been advocates, even in the forests of old Ger many; without it there are none." Advo cacy, according to this ingenious writer, is the result and corollary of what he calls the "right of defence," and grows and flourishes only where, and in proportion as, that nat ural and indefeasible right is acknowledged. In Rome in the Republican days, "the bar" had, perhaps, no distinct and recognized ex istence; but advocacy and eloquence flour ished in the highest degree. Under the Empire the bar was a body at once sup ported and restrained by a long line of imperial ordinances, but the eloquence of advocacy was a thing of the past. Whatever the true philosophy of the mat ter may be, to Athens we must look for the earliest records of the advocate's eloquence, speaking not in his own cause, but in that of others. That the right of addressing the judges was not confined to the immediate parties to the suit, is clear; but it is equally clear that an orator could not obtain a hear ing when he was a stranger to the client and the cause. Some personal interest in one or the other would seem to have been the ne cessary qualification. There was, however, one class of cases in which, to judge from

Liician, litigants were allowed professional assistance, — when they were too drunk to speak for themselves. A peculiar class at Athens were the locographers, — men who devoted themselves to composing speeches which were afterwards delivered in court by others. In this way Demosthenes himself was at first employed. He wrote one for Phormio, which all his re lations came to court in a body to deliver. It began with an apology for Phormio's no torious incompetency to make a speech for himself. In this c^se Demosthenes further signalized himself by writing the speech for the other side also. One of the most cele brated of locographers was Antiphon, who deserves an immortality, for good or evil, for having been the first lawyer who took money for his work. Among its great discoverers, the world should not forget the inventor of fees. The practice of fee- taking extended rapidly, as was not unnatural, among the speakers of speeches as well as the writers; and once treated as the legitimate means of turning an honest obol, advocacy may be fairly said to have entered upon a recog nized professional existence. If this discovery of Antiphon's was an epoch in advocacy, the leading case of Phryne marked another. After her trial it appears to have occurred with some force to the authorities, that there might have been a miscarriage of justice. Her case, therefore, led to the passing of the first re corded law that limited the discretion and regulated the conduct of advocates. The law which grew out of Phryne's case was simple and effective. All oratorical tricks calculated to move pity or indignation were forbidden; and the judges were enjoined not to look at the accused during a crimi nal trial if anything of the kind was at tempted. "This rule," says D'Argis, "did much to chill the eloquence of the Greek orators." Speakers were also ordered to confine themselves within the bounds of modesty; not to attempt to gain the private ear of