Sir Thomas More would have no lawyers
in his Utopia, as a "sort of people whose
profession it is to disguise matters as well
as wrest laws;" but the plan of dispensing
with them was not infallible, for we may
learn from Milton's account of the Russians
of his time, who "had no lawyers," that
they found, nevertheless, that "justice by
corruption of inferiors was much
perverted."

The lawyers have had their friends,
though chiefly among their own numbers.
Cicero knew nothing in the world "so
royal, liberal, and generous" as the
advocate's art. And "what," says a quaint old
Englishman, Davys, "is the matter and
subject of our profession but justice, the
lady and queen of all moral virtues?" But
readers who want lofty estimates of the work
and mission of the bar, may turn to the
lawyers of France, where the "noblesse de
la robe" ever claimed and held conspicuous
rank. Let us content ourselves with the
definition of D'Aguesseau, who calls his
brethren "an order as old as the magistracy,
as noble as virtue, as necessary as
justice;" and with this simple and effective
parry of M. Jules le Berquier, in his
recently published book, Le Barreau Moderne,
from which we shall beg leave to quote
more freely presently: "From the stage,"
he says, " the world has long cast its harmless
darts at the bar, which has laughed at
them and not suffered." It amuses the
world and does not hurt the bar.

When and where was the origin of the
advocate, it is impossible with preciseness
to say. D'Argis is right in saying that "his
function is older than his name." For the
name, in its present application, dates back
no earlier than Imperial Rome. Originally,
tho "advocatus" was the friend who
attended to give an accused man the support
of his presence on his trial, a sort of witness
to character: the advocate of old Rome had
no name but "orator." When he became
a profession he got many names; his most
complimentary title being of the middle
ages, when he was in some countries called
"clamator," which D'Argis civilly refers to
a Celtic root, "clain," signifying "suit;"
but for which malevolence will suggest a
more obvious meaning. As for the
function, a writer from whom Le Berquier
quotes calls it " contemporary with the first
law-suit and the first court," but not with
strict correctness. There never was a
country without law-suits: there have been
and are countries without advocates. In
Turkey, for instance, there are none now.
Advocacy is, in fact, says M. le Berquier,
the growth of liberty; and the bar, a body
of men springing up in a free country,
self-born and self-governed, called into
gradual existence by the gradually increasing
complication of social relations, till out of
the rude speakers who pleaded their own
cause before the Mosaic tribunals, grew the
barristers of the present day. Where there
has been freedom, there have been
advocates, even in the forests of old Germany:
without it there are none. The orators of
Greece, according to Cicero, were to be
sought in Athens only. Athens alone, adds
M. le Berquier, had free institutions.
Advocacy, according to the theory of this
ingenious writer, is the result and the corollary
of what he calls the "right of defence,"
and grows and flourishes only where, and
in proportion as, that natural and indefeasible
right is acknowledged. In Rome, in
the republican days, "the bar" had,
perhaps, no distinct and recognised existence;
but advocacy and eloquence flourished in
the highest degree. Under the empire, the
bar was a body at once supported and
restrained by a long line of imperial
ordinances, but the eloquence of advocacy was
a thing of the past. Such is a brief outline
of M. le Berquier's philosophy; but as our
touch of the subject must of necessity be
light, we must refer those who are tempted
to study it at length to the author's pages,
which will well repay a careful perusal.

Whatever the true philosophy of the
matter may be, to Athens we must look for
the earliest records of the advocate's
eloquence, speaking, not in his own cause, but
in that of others. Of the excessive fondness
of the Athenians for judicial proceedings,
and the attraction that the seats of the
dicasts (jury-box and bench in one) had for
that excitable people, Aristophanes has left
us an undying record in his comedy of the
Wasps, from which Racine "adapted" his
far less amusing Plaideurs. But, elaborate
as their system was, we are at a loss for
any certain clue to the principles on which
the advocacy of causes, all important as it
was in a country where Hyperides could
get a verdict and a judgment in the pretty
Phryne's favour by the simple but peculiar
method recorded in Gerome's picture, was
conducted in the courts of the Areopagus.
That the right of addressing the judges
was not confined to the immediate parties
to the suit, is clear; but it is equally clear
that an orator could not obtain a hearing
when he was a stranger to the client and
the cause. Some personal interest in one