OUR NOBLE PROFESSION. MR. CHO ATE, at Chicago said :— " Let me speak of our noble profession, and of some of the reasons we have for lov ing and honoring it — above all others. In the first place, I maintain that in no other occupation' to which men can devote their lives is there a nobler intellectual pursuit or a higher moral standard than inspires and pervades the ranks of the legal profession. To establish justice, to maintain the rights of men, to defend the helpless and op pressed, to succor innocence and to punish guilt, to aid in the solution of those great questions, legal and constitutional, which are constantly being evolved from the evervarying affairs and business of men — are duties that may well challenge the best powers of man's intellect and the noblest qualities of the human heart. I do not, of course, mean to say that among the ninety thousand lawyers whom the census counts in our seventy millions of people, there is not much base alloy — I speak of that great body of active and laborious practitioners upon whom rests the responsibility of sub stantial litigations and the conduct and guid ance of important affairs; you will look in vain elsewhere for more spotless honor, more absolute devotion, more patient indus try, more conscientious fidelity than among these. I am not unmindful of that evermooted question how we can with the strict est honor maintain the side that is wrong, and the suggestion that, as only one side can be right in every lawsuit, we must half the time be struggling for injustice. But that vexed question has long been settled by the common sense of mankind. It is only out of the contest of facts and of brains, that the right can ever be evolved — only on
the anvil of discussion that the spark of truth can be struck out. Perfect justice, as Judge Story said, ' belongs to one judgment seat only — to that which is linked to the throne of God — but human tribunals can never do justice and decide for the right until both sides have been fully heard.' "When Jeremiah Evarts, the father of my great master in the law and himself a truly great and righteous man, had graduated from Yale and was considering the law as his profession, this same question disturbed his honest and conscientious mind, and he con sulted Judge Ellsworth, afterward chief jus tice of the United States, who solved his doubts by advising him that any cause that was fit for any court to hear was fit for any lawyer to present on either side, and that neither judge nor counsel had the right to prejudge the case until both sides had been heard, and he told him of Sir Matthew Hale, one of the most righteous lawyers and judges in English history, who began with the same misgivings, but modified his views when sev eral causes that he had condemned and re jected proved finally to be good. "Nor is ours the only profession in which the same question has been advocated, for we read in the life of John Milton, that when his good old father had lavished a good part of his fortune upon his education at Cam bridge until he had taken his degree of Mas ter of Arts, having no other thought than that his son should devote his great charac ter, intellect and eloquence to the church — the youthful poet after a full study of the question, decided for himself that he could not enter a profession which would require him to advocate what he did not believe to be true."
