Some Nineteenth Century Thoughts on Legal Ethics:

The lawyer shuns their opinion who regard the professors of the law as an order whose interests are at variance with those of society at large, and therefore to be protected by walls and bulwarks raised in self defence. Lawyers were appointed to live for society, not society framed for them to live by. Hence in those rules which they make for their conduct towards one another and towards their fellow citizens, the lawyer regards those as of no binding force which clash with the welfare of society at large: and though to the other rules of his order he pays that deference which courtesy toward his fellow labourers in the work of justice demands, he ever remembers the good of society and the principles of equity whereby to relax their rigour...In all such matters the lawyer looks to the intent of the rule; and so the abatements he makes from the rigour of it be made in honour, with a clean conscience, without left- handed designs of self-interest or avarice, he cares not what censure he may incur from those who, considering the privileges of their order as of more value than the good of society for which alone that order exists, however wise they be in their own eyes, to others resemble the fool who arrogantly thought he played on the organ when he only blew the bellows.

Edward O’Brien, The Lawyer, His Character and Holy Rule of Life: After the Manner of George Herbert’s Country Parson (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart 1843) [first published in London by Pickering in 1842].

 The Legal Antiquarian is back. After several years, the death of a spouse, and  the loss of the use of my legs, I have decided that it is time to bring this blog back to life. In doing so, I offer those of you who read this blog two new entries: one legal and one for for all of the academics among you who may have lost faith in what we do amid the madness of our current existence.

For the lawyers and legal antiquarians:

From the American Register (1804), p. 952.

A proclamation was issued in the twentieth year of James the First, in which the voters for Members of Parliament are directed “not to choose curious and wrangling lawyers, who seeke reputation by stirring needless questions.”  A more favourable disposition to the professors of this “honourable science: appears to have been entertained by Aleyn, in his History, printed in London, 1638.

A prating lawyer (one of those which cloud

That honour’d science) did their conduct take:

He talked all law, and the tumultuous crowd

Thought it had been all gospel that he spake.

At length these fools that common error saw,

A lawyer on their side, but not the law.

And for the professors of the law (and all other subjects):

From,  Frederick Hall, Eulogy of the Late Solomon Metcalf

Allen, Professor of Languages in Middlebury College (Middlebury, Vt., March 17, 1818), p. 9.

Literary men, says he, I refer particularly to instructors in colleges, although they are not adorned with that splendor, which is attached to military exploits, and which like the lightning, dazzles and dies, exert nevertheless, upon the mass of the community a secret, but very extensive and powerful influence. No body of men, of their number, unless my notions are very wild, sustain equal responsibility or possess equal means of corrupting, or improving the publick sentiment. Their opinions on political, or moral, or religious subjects, will, for the most part, be transfused into the minds of their pupils, and “grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength.” The influence, exerted by these pupils, will be felt more or less strongly in every town and every village in our land.