Ethics in Service | Page 4

Inner and the Middle Temple, and Gray's Inn, together with a number of others known as Chancery Inns, which have of late years disappeared. Henry III took these Inns under his especial protection and prohibited the study of law anywhere in London save in the Inns of Court. They were the homes of the Bar, for within their walls lawyers had their offices, and there students of the law received their education. In fact, they may be said to constitute the foundation of the modern profession of the law in the English-speaking race.
The Inns of Court were at first an aristocratic institution, and only men of good blood were permitted to practice in them. Indeed, that was the case in the early days in Rome. Pliny reports that no one could become a jurist consult, an advocatus or a patronus except he be of the Patrician class. But soon after the Empire began, this rule broke down and the Roman Bar became open to all. So, too, in the English Bar at first admission was controlled by the Benchers or governing bodies of the Inns of Court and the students were chosen only from good families. It was probably this that led to their unpopularity and to the denunciation which they received in Wat Tyler's day, in the fourteenth century, and from Jack Cade's followers whom Shakespeare makes wish to kill all the lawyers in the next century. Their exclusive spirit passed away, however, and while aristocratic class distinctions were rigidly maintained in English society, the Bar became most democratic through the avenue to positions of highest influence on the Bench and in politics which it freely offered to able men from the people. And, indeed, there is no part of English history that is so full of interest as the stories of her great lawyers, who, beginning in the humblest conditions of life, fought their way by real merit into positions of control in the government and thus gave ability and strength to the aristocracy of which they became a part.
In the three centuries or more after the establishment of the Inns of Court, no division appeared in the profession of the law, and it was not until about 1556 that the profession became separated into attorneys at law and solicitors in chancery, on the one hand, and barristers on the other. The former dealt directly with clients and performed the preliminary work of drafting documents and preparing briefs, while the latter, the barristers, drafted the pleadings and presented the causes in court. A similar division of functions prevailed in the Roman Bar. I shall have occasion later to comment on the advantages and disadvantages of this division, but this summary reference is sufficient for my present purpose in tracing the history of the Bar in England. During this period, after the establishment of the Inns of Court, the unpopularity of the Bar manifested itself in the enactment of statutes forbidding the election of lawyers to Parliament. This gave rise to the noted Parliament known as the "Dunces Parliament," because everybody who knew anything about the law, and therefore about the framing or the operation of statutes, was excluded from membership.
In his interesting history of the American Bar, Mr. Charles Warren, of the Boston Bar, says:
"Lawyers, as the instruments through which the subtleties and iniquities of the Common Law were enforced, were highly unpopular as a class in England during the period of Cromwell and Milton."
Milton wrote:
"Most men are allured to the trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions and flowing fees."
As examples of a lawyer's reputation in London in the seventeenth century, Mr. Warren cites the titles of the following tracts printed at that time: "The Downfall of Unjust Lawyers"; "Doomsday Drawing Near with Thunder and Lightning for Lawyers"; "A Rod for Lawyers who are Hereby declared Robbers and Deceivers of the Nation"; "Essay where is Described the Lawyers, Smugglers and Officers Frauds."
I note these facts as I progress to indicate and reinforce my original statement that the present time is not the only time in the history of civilization when lawyers have received the condemnation of their fellow subjects or fellow citizens. Yet not only has the profession survived such movements but its usefulness has been recognized in succeeding crises.
I need hardly mention that most of the progress toward individual liberty in English history was made through the successful struggle of the lawyers against the assertion of the divine right of Kings and through the defence of privilege by members of our profession. Lawyers like Lord Coke and Lord Hale stand out in the profession for their maintenance of the