The Lawyer's Livelihood easy and convenient method for escap ing taxation. This is unquestionably true, but the fault is with the Legislature, from which body, if any, relief must be obtained." (People ex rel. Beaman v. Feitner, 63 App. Div. 174.) It might be argued that in each of these cases the fair intent of the law makers was thwarted, but in the opinion of the courts the parties were free to proceed upon lines left open by the language of the statutes, or by the con flict of laws. If such was the right of the parties, it would seem to follow that they were entitled to receive advice to that effect from counsel learned in the law. The lawyer must respect the moral law, and under canon 32 of the new Code of Ethics "he must observe and advise his client to observe the statute law, though until a statute shall have been construed and interpreted by com petent adjudication he is free and is entitled to advise as to its validity and as to what he conscientiously believes to be its just meaning and extent." This right of the client to ask and to receive advice from competent counsel, especially with reference to intended transactions, and the extent to which the counsel may go in giving such ad vice, are subjects regarded by the public with particular scrutiny where the client is a corporation. Despite the fact that perhaps ninety per cent in amount of the active business of the country involves the participation of corporations; despite the fact that there is hardly a business man of im portance who is not a stockholder in some corporation or in cordial relations with some stockholder; despite the steadily increasing and general tendency and practice to adopt the form of cor porate organization for private busi nesses heretofore conducted by partner
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ships and individuals—there still per sists a formidable and aggressive sus picion of the methods of corporations and of their officers, and in particular of their legal advisers. At the August meeting of the bar of Virginia, the association was favored, as three years ago we were honored, by an address from the learned and elo quent William Lindsay, formerly Sena tor from Kentucky. In the course of his address, Judge Lindsay said:— Officers of corporations may be equal in in tegrity, good citizenship and morality to the average members of society, but in the man agement of corporate business they act not personally but officially, and the municipal and not the moral law measures the extent and defines the limitations of their duties and responsibilities. The substitution of the corporation for the individual in the ordinary business trans actions of life seriously affects society and its members, and tends to diminish the influence for good at one time attending the profession of the law. And finally:— Those great corporations are proving them selves the greatest instruments for evil man has ever devised. They may promote the further increase of material prosperity, but if their power for evil remains they will do so at the expense of free institutions and to the peril of our personal and political freedom. More recently and perhaps more dis criminatingly a similar warning has been sounded by the historian James Schouler, who observes that — The corporation has been of immense ad vantage to society in enabling great material projects to be successfully carried out. But it has brought prodigious evils in its train and one of those evils is the diminishing sense among business men of personal honor, per sonal responsibility, personal integrity. . . . Its real element for good or evil lies in the character of the individuals who work it, who possess control and give it direction. (Ideals of the Republic, 270.)
