THE GREEN BAG.
Published Monthly, at $3.00 per annum.
Single numbers, 35 cents.
Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, Horace W. Fuller, 15, Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of interest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetiæ, anecdotes, etc.
THE GREEN BAG.
WE clip the following from the " London Law Journal " : —
"The following extract from Peter Pindar's ' Birth day Ode ' is for despatch across the Atlantic into the capacious mouth of the ' Green Bag ' : —
For truly questions are the keys of knowledge
Soldiers who forage for the mind's digestion,
Cut figures at th' Old Bailey and at college,
Make Chancellors, Chief-Justices, and Judges,
E'en of the lowest green-bag drudges.
Dr. John Wolcot flourished nearly all the time of George III., and knew the green-bag carriers as drudges. Might the motto of the modern ' Green Bag ' be ' Soldiers who forage for the mind's digestion '?"
If our esteemed contemporary cites the above to sustain the position it has assumed that the green bag was never the badge of a lawyer, we have nothing to say; but it would then appear that chancellors, chief-justices, and judges are made in England, not from lawyers, but from "green-bag drudges." In this country " lawyers and green-bag drudges " have for a long time been synonymous terms. We accept with pleas ure the motto so kindly provided for us, "Soldiers who forage for the mind's digestion," and we believe we furnish a pretty good quality of mental pabulum.
In our June number we shall publish an extremely interesting article on the Supreme Court of Canada, by Robert Cassels, Esq. The illus trations will include a view of the Supreme Court room, and portraits of prominent judges.
A growl from a thoroughly disgusted lay man.
Editor of the " Green Bag" :
Sir, — Did it ever occur to you lawyers what justification the layman has for cussing law and particularly lawyers?
Yet I want no better reason for utterly damning (I use the word in no profane sense) law and lawyers, than is afforded by the memoir of Lord Eldon, given in your March number. He is praised very highly, yet it is said that he earnestly opposed Sir Samuel Romilly's reform of the criminal law. Now, the story is that Romilly was led into his great work by the case of a woman being hanged for stealing a loaf of bread; her husband had been impressed into the navy, she was left starving, and she stole to relieve the pangs of hunger of her children. I would not like to say that Lord Eldon was the judge who sentenced this woman with the horrible statement that " the protection of society demands the rigorous execution of the wholesome provisions of the law," but those were the words of the criminal on the bench. Now, will you say just what amount of virtue would be required before the last great bar, to atone for such horrible wickedness? Don't go off about men becoming devoted to precedent, wrapped up in devotion to the law as they have been brought up to see it, etc.; the Devil wants no choicer weapon than the justification of self-deceivers. Now don't you, as a lawyer, see wherein the root of this trouble is? It is in the lawyer considering the law as an abstract science, a thing to be revered not for what it is or what it does, but for what it has been; he looks on it as an end, not a means, and as specially constructed for his edification, not as a means of furthering human progress and happiness, forgetting that the law should be for us unfortunate laymen, not for his professional self. See how judges have erected a fortress in which they intrench themselves against all enactments of legislatures, and hoist the flag of "the common law "!
You know that all efforts of legislatures to con struct a law of special or limited liability partner ships have failed, owing to the cussedness of judges in falling back on their "strict construction," which seems incited by the reverence for their pet fetich.
Now Heaven forbid that I should attempt to comprehend what, who, or where this Juggernaut is.
