Etiquette of the English Bar. rate, are, with hardly an exception, still tenacious observers of those restrictive rules of etiquette which prevent recourse being had to their services except at the discretion of a solicitor. The cause of this inverted, un natural state of the legal profession, fraught with so many evils to the bar and to the public, is only too manifest. It arises simply and solely from the manner in which the bar has entangled its own feet in the meshes •of its own etiquette. In the anxiety to make the profession select, in the indulgence of an unwholesome desire for exclusiveness, which most erroneously considers contact with the clients for whom they act as derog atory to their dignity, they have fenced themselves round with an etiquette which forbids them to see a client except through the intervention of a solicitor, and have thus abandoned to the lower branch of the pro fession duty of athe lawyer most—dignified the office portion of jurisconsult. of the |
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but through the suicidal folly of their own self-imposed laws of etiquette, which have actually forced upon the lower branch of the profession the patronage and power which properly belong to the counsel, learned in the law, whose duty originally was to ad vise their clients as well as to advocate their causes. If the question be looked at from an his torical point of view, the inference will be that the present state of professional rela tions is of very recent date. It is a curious inquiry to trace out the slow and gradual steps by which the solicitor system has grown from small beginnings to its present height. It is at the same time a difficult inquiry, because the materials for it arc scanty and widely scattered. The old prin ciple of Xorman jurisprudence was, that plaintiff and defendant must personally ap pear in court. Motives of convenience led very early to a relaxation of this strict rule, That duty of giving advice to all comers, and even in the Grand Coustumier de Nor which the noble senators of Rome were mandie an attonrncé, one who attorns to proud to discharge, and in which they found prosecute or defend a suit, is distinctly rec a sure and blameless road to the highest ognized. In the time of Glanville it was honors of the republic; that duty which matter of practice that the party to a suit the ancient Serjeants of England discharged, might personally appear in court and there when, each seated at his allotted pillar in appoint a representative for the particular the nave of the old cathedral of St. Paul's, suit, called a " rcsponsalis ad lucrandum vel with his writing materials on his knee, he perdtndum" who had authority to bind his took down the complaints and answered the principal, to cast essoins, and to determine questions of clients, the modern bar of Eng the suit by judgment of final concord. The land is too squeamish, too delicate, too ex king's leave was necessary for this purpose, clusive to perform. Instead of elevating the and was given by a writ out of Chancery. profession, this mawkish etiquette has de The convenience to the suitor of dispensing graded it, and whatever the barrister has with his personal appearance led to a series gained in exclusiveness, he loses in indepen of statutory enactments extending the privi dence. If one branch of the profession must lege of making attorneys. Thus the Statute be dependent on the other, it is the solicitor of Merton enabled freemen to make suit in who should look to the barrister, instead of county courts, or courts baron, by attorney. the barrister to the solicitor. The reason The Statute of Westminster I (20 Hen. 3, c. why this is not so is simply and solely be 10) provided that tenants in writs of assize cause the solicitor sees the client first. The should not delay the juries by essoins after bar of England is placed in this unhappy they had once appeared, but should make position through no act of parliament, an attorney to follow the suit for them. The through no combination of the solicitors, appointment of attorneys at this period of
