An Essay on Professional Ethics

An Essay on Professional Ethics,
by George

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George Sharswood
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Title: An Essay on Professional Ethics Second Edition
Author: George Sharswood

Release Date: August 20, 2007 [eBook #22359]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ESSAY
ON PROFESSIONAL ETHICS***
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Library Production Service. See
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1.001
Transcriber's note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
The oe ligature has been transcribed as [oe].
A table of contents, though not present in the original, has been
provided below:
PREFACE. INTRODUCTION. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS.
APPENDIX. No. I. No. II. No. III.

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS.
AN ESSAY ON PROFESSIONAL ETHICS.
by
GEORGE SHARSWOOD.
Id non eo tantum, quod si vis illa dicendi malitiam instruxerit, nihil sit
publicis privatisque rebus perniciosius eloquentia: sed nos quoque ipsi,
qui pro virile parte conferre aliquid ad facultatem dicendi conati sumus,
pessime mereamur de rebus humanis, SI LATRONI COMPAREMUS
HÆC ARMA, NON MILITI. QUINCT. DE INST. OR.

Second Edition.
Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson & Co., Law Booksellers and
Publishers, No. 535 Chestnut Street. 1860.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by T. & J. W.
Johnson & Co., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the
Eastern District of Penn'a.
C. Sherman & Son, Printers, S. W. Cor. Seventh and Cherry Streets,
Philadelphia.

TO
MY HONORED MASTER,
JOSEPH R. INGERSOLL, LL.D.,
INSCRIBED
AS A
TESTIMONY OF
RESPECT AND GRATITUDE.

PREFACE.
The following Essay was originally published under the title of "A
Compend of Lectures on the Aims and Duties of the Profession of the
Law, delivered before the Law Class of the University of
Pennsylvania." A portion of it had been read by the author as an
Introductory Lecture at the opening of the Fifth Session of the Law
Department of that Institution, October 2d, 1854. The young gentlemen,
alumni, and students of the school, who were present on that occasion,
requested a copy for publication, in order that each of them might

possess a memento of their connection with the Institution. The author
preferred to publish the entire Compend than merely a part of it. He
hesitated much in doing so, because the questions discussed are
difficult, and opinions upon them variant, and he could scarcely hope
that he had in every case succeeded in just discrimination. A review of
the matter now, when a second edition has been called for, has
suggested, however, no important change in the principles advanced,
though a few additions have been made, some inaccuracies corrected,
and an introduction upon the importance of the profession, in a public
point of view, prefixed.
G. S.

INTRODUCTION.
The dignity and importance of the Profession of the Law, in a public
point of view, can hardly be over-estimated. It is in its relation to
society at large that it is proposed to consider it. This may be done by
showing its influence upon legislation and jurisprudence. These are the
right and left hands of government in carrying out the great purposes of
society. By legislation is meant the making of law--its primary
enactment or subsequent alteration. Jurisprudence is the science of
what the law is or means, and its practical application to cases as they
arise. The province of legislation is jus dare--of jurisprudence, jus
dicere. The latter is entirely in the hands of lawyers as a body--the
former almost entirely.
Legislation is indeed a nobler work than even jurisprudence. It is the
noblest work in which the intellectual powers of man can be engaged,
as it resembles most nearly the work of the Deity. It is employed as
well in determining what is right or wrong in itself--the due proportion
of injuries and their remedies or punishments--as in enforcing what is
useful and expedient. How wide the scope of such a work! The power
of society over its individual members, or, in other words, sovereignty,
which is practically vested in the legislature, is a type of the Divine
power which rules the physical and moral universe. "There is one

Lawgiver," says the Apostle James. Not that the Supreme Being is the
sole universal lawgiver in the