Mr. Warren's American Bar extravagant exactions; we think their practice pernicious and their mode unconstitutional. You will therefore endeavor that such regulations be introduced into our Courts of Law, and that such restraints be laid on the order of lawyers as that we may have recourse to the laws and find our security and not our ruin in them. If upon a fair discussion and mature deliveration such a measure should appear impracticable, you are to endeavor that the order of Lawers be totally abolished; an alternative preferable to their continuing in their present mode.
The "Letters of an American Farmer" (1J87) voiced this same sentiment: — Lawyers are plants that will grow in any soil that is cultivated by the hands of others, and when once they have taken root they will extin guish every vegetable that grows around them. The fortunes they daily acquire in every province from the misfortunes of their fellow-citizens are surprising. The most ignorant, the most bung ling member of that profession will, if placed in the most obscure part of the country, promote litigiousness and amass more wealth than the most opulent farmer with all his toil. . . . What a pity that our forefathers who happily extin guished so many fatal customs and expunged from their new government so many errors and abuses, both religious and civil, did not also prevent the introduction of a set of men so dan gerous. . . . The value of our laws and the spirit of freedom which often tends to make us litigious must necessarily throw the greatest part of the property of the Colonies into the hands of these gentlemen. In another century, the law will possess in the North what now the church possesses in Peru and Mexico.
In short, popular opinion expressed itself that "no lawyers should be ad mitted to speak in court, and the order be abolished as not only a useless but a dangerous body to the public." John Quincy Adams wrote that "the mere title of lawyer is sufficient to deprive a man of the public confidence." The Supreme Court of the United States had not yet attained its unique position and power in government. It was not until the appointment of Mar shall as Chief Justice in 1801 that it began on its great career. In 1791 Rut-
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ledge resigned from that Court to be come Chancellor of South Carolina. In 1795 Jay resigned as Chief Justice to become Governor of New York, and as late as 1800, in declining re-appoint ment, wrote that he Left the bench, perfectly convinced that und61a system so defective, it would not obtain energy, weight and dignity, which were essential to its affording due support to the National Govern ment; nor acquire the public confidence and respect which, as the last resort of the justice of the Nation, it should possess.
With the case of Marbury v. Madison, in 1803, began that line of decisions that established the United States Constitu tion as the supreme law of the land, and that gave the Supreme Court its posi tion as final arbiter of our law. From that day to the present, there is an unbroken history of splendid development in American law. Each state has produced its great lawyers. Each court and each generation has brought forth great judges. Ever grow ing and ever fitting itself to new conditions, our law has kept pace with advancing American civilization. It is a history of impressive achieve ment, of which not only every lawyer, but every patriotic citizen may well be proud. Mr. Warren in his recent "History of the American Bar" has written so enter tainingly and so intelligently of this long record of American legal achieve ment that the book throbs with vital human interest. In these days when popular clamor is directed against our courts and laws, the history of similar discontent of former generations, and of what our laws and our courts have been in the past, must help to give this point and direction to the efforts of those who still believe in the vitality of our constitutional system.
