THE LAWYER'S POSITION IN SOCIETY. By Guy Carleton Lee. ONE of the greatest moralists of the last century has expressed his conviction that " Nations as well as individuals may possibly become insane," and I think the learned author might well have said : Na tions certainly do become insane. The pages of history furnish many familiar proofs of this assumption. We can follow up the suggestion and find various forms and types of insanity in the nation corresponding in some degree to the madness and delusions of individuals; and I have no doubt that racial psychology might well include a department of mental aberra tion as manifested in races and nations. Whether the anthropologists and psycholo gists are willing to extend their sciences already covering very wide fields, we cannot say. It however remains a hypothesis which enables us in a large degree to understand the misconceptions and delusions that from time to time seize upon the popular mind. There exists at the present time a strong delusion in regard to the professions popu larly styled learned,. and this delusion is the more extraordinary, occurring as it does in a land which prides itself upon the intelli gence of its citizens, and appears to consider popular education and learning as the very bulwark of the nation. According to that by no means inconsiderable class suffering from this mental aberration or species of fixed idea, physicians, theologians and law yers are entirely on the wrong track. A man, in order to treat disease, needs not to study anatomy or pathology or to spend his time in laborious investigation of the effect of drugs upon the human system. He should content himself with a metaphysical system, a wild farrago of scraps of exploded diatribic philosophies masquerading as a revelation.
Another class, even more numerous, for the metaphysical jargon hurled at the un lucky physician needs a certain amount of reading in order to be acquired, regards the lawyer in a much worse light than a deluded man. To its members he is a species of social vampire which the greed of the dom inant class has maintained to help ruin the "horny-handed son of toil"; his learning is but knavery reduced to science; his busi ness, in a large degree, when not the support of the capitalistic offender, is the production of strife, that from it he may draw the enor mous revenues he is popularly supposed to enjoy. He is perpetually La Fontaine's monkey dividing the cheese between the two cats. I do not think I over-rate the opinions that exist in many minds. There are movements in existence wRich are directly opposed to the legal profession, just as there are move ments with the object of defeating the benefi cent labors of the medical profession. You all know them, their aims are openly avowed. I would not pretend that there has been no occasion for complaint in the history of the learned professions. I am even inclined to the opinion that the legal profession has sinned more recently and more conspicuous ly than any other; not merely because the opposition is greater to lawyers and the whole system for which they stand, but also because men whose selfish interests were bound up with traditional abuses have felt themselves called upon to effect a reform, in order that justice might not be denied the poor man, and I am willing to go even fur ther, and say that a system which allows officers of justice to draw sums as fees that are disproportionately large for the work done, is in need of further reformation; that
