THE LAW AND LAWYERS gold or the dross that may be in his mental or moral make-up. It has been said of John Marshall that he found the Federal Constitution a skeleton and clothed it with flesh and blood, made it a breathing, living thing. But I question if any one act in his great life laid deeper and broader the pedestal of his enduring fame, in the reign of law, as when he dis played the intellectual honesty and moral courage, despite his personal inclination, to say to Thomas Jefferson and the aroused antagonism of an incensed public opinion that the law of the land, which he was sworn to respect and enforce, forbade the sacrifice of even Aaron Burr to appease the appetite of public clamor. When now and then the Jack Cades thunder at the gates of the citadel of our constitutional guaran ties of liberty and property, proclaiming to their tatterdemalion followers: "The first thing we do let us kill all the lawyers," and the sentiment is echoed from the press and the hustings, we should never forget for the moment that it was the ineffaceable infamy of a Pontius Pilate who, after con ceding that he found no evil thing in the humble Nazarene arraigned before him, yet released the culprit Barabbas, and surren dered to the mob for execution the purest man whose life ever gladdened the world with light and hope. Unless it was written in the irrevocable chapter of destiny, or foreordained, that Jesus should thus be sacrificed, to quiet for the moment the mob, I have always felt that if "Judge" Pilate had before him such a lawyer as Cicero, or such lawyers as those
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who defended Aaron Burr, the vertebra of the judge might have been strengthened and the mob been talked down, and the infamy of the trial fallen to the lot of Judas Iscariot. For no matter how strong or how weak the man who sits on the bench, he must, after all, lean for support upon the bar. The brightest and sweetest flower that sheds its fragrance upon the air will choke and wither amid the overgrowth of noxious weeds. A platoon of pigmies can pull down a giant. A Thersites may confuse with ribald jest an Achilles. Evil communications not only corrupt good manners, but our environ ments often stifle our aspirations and stunt our mental and moral growth. The sun draws skyward the cedar tops; but the tramping of herds about the roots will cause it to decay and fall. The judge is often but the mirror that reflects the char acter of the bar around him. If he give back distorted images of justice and right eousness, it is much because the lawyers about him are crooked and warped. If the bat be inspired by high ideals, standing reclus in curia, exhibiting true nobility of character, intellectual greatness and rare culture, the tendency is to make the judge himself what Cicero lauded as perfectus magister. If there be any noble impulses throbbing in the breast, or any Promethean spark alive in the soul, the one will bear sweet fruit and the other will blaze out into generous light when the social atmosphere we breathe is pure, and the voices we hear come from the mountain elevations of Truth, Honor, and Justice. KANSAS CITY, Mo., April, 1905.
