The Lawyer of Fifty Years Ago and the Lawyer of To-day1 BY WILLIAM L. MARBURY OF THE BALTIMORE BAR
of the Maryland State G'ENTLEMEN Bar Association: — Several years ago, at one of the annual dinners of the Bar Associations of Balti more city, I was called upon to speak to the toast, "The Lawyer of Fifty Years Ago and the Lawyer of Today." I have always entertained the suspi cion that what I said on that post-pran dial occasion may not have exhausted the subject, whatever effect it may have had upon the audience, and it has oc curred to me that this might be a fitting opportunity to proceed a little further with the same topic. Some of the questions which I pro pose to discuss, with your kind indul gence, are these : — Does the lawyer of today hold as high a place and exercise as commanding in fluence in this country as did the lawyer of fifty years ago? If in any respect he does not, what is the reason, and how can he best be re stored to his former position? There can be no question as to the fact that in the ancient time the rank of the legal profession in this land of ours was a very high one, nowhere more so than in Maryland. It needs but to men tion a few of the names familiar in the annals of the American bar to have the truth of this statement recognized: William Pinkney, "the boast of Mary land and the pride of the United States"; Patrick Henry, of Virginia, he of the 1 The President's address delivered before the Maryland State Bar Association in June, 1911.
prophetic vision — the far-seeing states man; Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate of Massachusetts. You could scarcely mention a name familiar in the history of the country prior to the late Civil War which was not that of a lawyer. So that Mr. Bryce in the chapter de voted to the American bar takes occa sion to say that "Some fifty years ago they had reached a power and a social consideration relatively greater than the bar has ever held on the eastern side of the Atlantic." There was no land under the sun where the lawyer stood for more than in this federal republic. The great prestige and power of the bar not only as an agency in the administration of justice, but as a powerful aid to the people in making a success of the experi ment of self-government, was clearly recognized by DeTocqueville, the kind est yet shrewdest critic of American de mocracy. "The people," says he, "in democratic states do not distrust the members of the legal profession, because it is well known that they are interested in serving the popular cause; and it listens to them without irritation be cause it does not attribute to them any sinister designs." And, speaking further of the American lawyer, he says: "I am not unacquainted with the defects which are inherent in the character of that body of men, but without this admixture of lawyer-like sobriety with the democra tic principle I question whether demo cratic institutions could long be main tained, and I cannot believe that a re public could subsist at the present time
