think of submitting our rights to the arbitration of such a tribunal, and should rather be astonished to find that any cause had been there decided in strict accordance with the principles of equity. And yet, such a paradoxical procedure prevails in all our courts of judicature. The professional lawyer comes into court, not with the view or intention to facilitate the administration of justice, but under a moral, legal, and professional obligation to advance the interest of his own client to the prejudice of the opposing party. He is not only bound by this obligation, but he is moreover prompted by the strongest motives that can be brought to bear upon the human mind-(interest and ambition)-to turn the scale of justice in his favor. And this, experience teaches us he will do, though every principle of right be violated, and the clearest statutes of the state distorted. In the advocacy of a weak or untenable cause, he labors first to throw his adversary off, by availing himself of some trivial informality, in no way affecting the real merits of the cause, or to make up a false issue, by which the true merits may be kept masked from the minds of the triers. He next labors to falsify and embarrass the witness, that his testimony may stand self-confuted, or be shorn of its proper bearing and influence upon the minds of those it is intended to enlighten; and if he do not always succeed, it is to be attributed to the intelligence and sagacity of the witness, whose penetration enables him to detect the stratagem intended to circumvent and mislead him. Nor is it difficult so to embarrass a modest or timid witness, as to cause him to express himself in language apparently incongruous, and which may be disingenuously turned to invalidate his evidence. It is certainly most irreligious and preposterous to confuse a witness while deposing on his oath before God and man, and that in a cause in which he is supposed to be disinterested. His sincerity and honesty are as much to be relied on as that of the constitutional arbiters in the cause; and if we are not to expect the truth from him, we have no guaranty that the cause will be finally decided in sincerity and truth-the same motives of conscience and good faith generally operating on both, judge and witness. But it is in the subsequent pleadings before the jury that every stratagem is used, every arti fice employed, and every species of imposition practiced, that the case admits of, or the abilities of the legal juggler can invent. Evidence is distorted; the law is misinterpreted; facts are mistated, or made to assume a false coloring; and justice, herself, almost turned to ridicule. Every passion of the human breast is appealed to; all the sympathies of our nature are sought to be aroused; while every consideration affecting our selfishness are brought to bear upon the mind, in order to affect a bias in favor of the speaker's cause. Even the most holy temple of divine justice is desecrated by a misapplication of its sacred oracles to the subserviency of an unworthy purpose; and it is only when the orator imagines he has transfused the poison of his own interested conceptions into the minds of the jury, that he withdraws from the contest, and awaits the effect of his charlatanry. Nor is it to be wondered at, if the magical transformations of eloquence, or the sickly vapors of sophistical ratiocination, have incapacitated the juror for rendering a true verdict. We are here met by the argument, "that each party has his advocate, and that this insures a fair trial." We may admit that this makes something like a balance of wrongs, but even this cannot, with truth, be affirmed. The advocates are never equal in talent, and consequently play an unequal game at the tactics of logomachy; and it is not difficult to predict the decision of a cause, when an experienced and eloquent advocate is opposed by one of ordinary ability, more especially in

But

our circuit courts, where the great mass of business is transacted. suppose the advocates to be equal-the tendency of a sophistical course of argumentation is to perplex the jury, and to displace in the mind those natural feelings of right and wrong, which spontaneously arise on the contemplation of the facts and the law, and to substitute the ingenious, unnatural and specious conclusions of the speaker; and as it is impossible to entertain but a small part of the wily sophisms intended to mislead, retaining only the most imposing, and these generally derived from the last speaker, a verdict must now be rendered on false data, having entirely merged their own conceptions of justice in a respect for the opinions of those, to whom they still fallaciously look for a proper exposition of the principles of the law. So completely has the juror lost sight of his prior sense of justice, in his efforts to follow the counsel, that should the latter inadvertently fail to press the strong points of his cause, he feels himself at liberty to disregard them, however material to a rightful decision; and thus the cause is decided, not on its merits, but upon the exparte pleadings of the advocates. We have spoken only of the sinister influence exerted upon the minds of the jury. It may be asked, Is the judge himself inaccessible to the seductive power of eloquence? Surely, no one who knows himself, or the laws which govern the currents of the human heart, will for a moment deny, that all men are warped in their judgment by the touching and striking appeals to their sympathies or to their prejudices, which the astute lawyer perpetually essays. It was not the righteousness of Patrick Henry's cause, when he plead against the Parsons, that caused the judges to fly from the bench, and sat the house of Burgesses in tears,-for these sublime effects of his electrical voice had been produced before the mind had time to digest the logical propositions of a demonstrative argument. It was the irresistible force of that talismanic power, by which this man was able to transfer his own vivid conceptions to the minds of his auditory, without the necessary intervention of any very forcible reasoning, and which imparted the most complete success in his profession, whenever there was a field for its operation. All men possess this power in some degree, and may now-adays enjoy very distinguished talents, which are employed in advocating the cause of injustice, or in sowing the seeds of discord between social brethren.

If, then, both the judge and jury are susceptible to the transforming influence of eloquence and specious argumentation, with what consistency can a man be introduced into the sacred deliberations of a court of justice, who will use these agents, with the professed intention to advance the interest of one party to the prejudice of the other? To whatever extent the court yield to this pernicious influence, it so far swerves from justice and contravenes the objects of its creation. If our courts need jurisconsults, let them be men disinterested and impartial, well-qualified to expound the law, and sustained by the government. Such men might be valuable auxiliaries in intricate cases, while they would have no reason to misapply a clear and unequivocal statute. We believe our judges should themselves understand the laws, and be able to apply them without foreign aid. It should be their special business to protect the jury from impertinent and irrelevant matter, as well as from everything likely to effect a bias in their judgment-to have every cause placed on its true merits, and decided by its own proper rule. This is indeed their duty at present, but it is in a great measure transferred to the advocates of the parties, who use the monstrous privilege to pour into the mind the jaundice of their own selfish views and designs. The

Athenians acted with wisdom in avoiding this source of fraud and injustice in their judicial investigations. With them no advocacy of causes was permitted, lest the judges should be biassed in their decisions thereby; and it is asserted they held their most important trials by night, in order to avoid the influence of sympathy, which the countenance or manners alone may engender in the mind. Yet so celebrated was the court of Areopagus for the equity of its decisions, that the neighboring nations often sent thither their hardest causes for adjudication. At Rome, a severe statute was enacted to repress the mercenary patron, who sat himself up to sell legal opinions, and for a time the iniquitous custom was suppressed; but the cupidity of her citizens prevailed over a feeble and ill-sustained sense of justice, and this nation was subsequently cursed with the evil we complain of. Yet it must be admitted to have had its rise in the government, and to have been the result of an impracticable scheme to republicanize the people, and prevent the growth of an odious aristocracy. It was the custom to appoint from the patrician orders for every plebeian a patron, whose duty it was to superintend the interests of his client, in court as well as out of it. It was thought that this law would establish more firmly the politicosocial bond, and cement the two grand orders of the state, thereby preventing the factitious distinction which pride and opulence ever mark out for themselves. This scheme was laudable; yet while it proved inadequate to the design, it had the effect to engender an aristocracy far more injurious in a civil and moral point of view, than that intended to be forestalled or corrected. The English borrowed the legal profession from the Romans, and we borrowed it from them; and thus an institution, springing from a misdirected Roman statute, and fostered by avarice and ambition, has been foisted in upon us, to shed its baleful influence upon and mar the purity of the most sacred councils of the government. It is contended, that as the judge cannot be well-informed in every case of nice discrimination that may fall within his jurisdiction, he requires the elucidation of those who have made the same their particular study, and are thus enabled to place it in its just aspect before the court. It must be replied, that the exposition relied on to enlighten the court, comes from interested sources, and is obnoxious to suspicion. It is just such information as would be rejected by the court, if derived from any other than a professional lawyer. If interest vitiates testimony, and drives the partial witness from the court, with what consistency can he be admitted, whose only motive is his own pecuniary and selfish advancement? If he have a higher motive it is ambition, one eminently calculated to propel him in opposition to the principles of equity; for it is ambition to achieve a victory for his client, regardless of conflicting interests. It is farther to be observed, that the material facts in the case are all that is necessary for the court to know, the law arising upon these facts being of clear and easy application, all else is speculative and irrelevant, and only tends to embarrass the mind. If juries are incapable of appreciating plain facts, and applying thereon plain statutes, in vain shall we expect them to apprehend the ingenious, sophistical, and abstruse circumlocution of partial commentators, and still more remote must be the hope of attaining the desiderata of every legal investigation, (a true and righteous verdict.) What then becomes of the boasted palladium of English and American liberties? But it is a slander upon American juries, that they are incapable of deciding justly upon the merits of a cause, until they have been compelled to listen to a long harangue, and this often the most tedious and fulsome; a vain

repetition of testimony, or a wanton abuse of some honest citizen, whose character stands in the way of nefarious designs. A cause is safer in their hands a hundred fold without the comments of interested advocates, than with the perplexing tergiversations of their spurious wranglings; and deprived of those, there would be a hundred-fold less of dissatisfaction with decisions at law than at present, taking no account of the enormous fees and ruinous expense incident to the plainest suits. Under the present system, the juror feels that the responsibility of examining the witness is so entirely transferred to the counsel, that he but seldom asks a question, and, indeed, often drops into a state of stupid indifference during the nicest cross-examination. Let him be sensible of his obligations, and he would ask questions better calculated to satisfy his mind, than any that could be propounded by another. He would be aroused to a just sense of his constitutional powers, and better qualified to discharge his duty. It is the want of responsibility that induces the present state of supineness on the part of the citizen-juror. He sees the most profound jurists of the country differ widely in their construction of the simplest laws; that he can transact no business of a legal nature without them, and that there is always one or more at hand to expound the legal doctrine of whatever cause he may be called upon to arbitrate. He thus settles down into the most complete ignorance of the law, and bends his ener gies to the acquisition of means for the support of those who think for

him.

If Europe was once priest-ridden by the Catholic clergy, America may now be said to be in the same state of vassalage to the legal profession. The labor of thought and inquiry is in a great measure removed from the common people, while full a tithe of their substance is abstracted to feed the voracious maws of these hungry disputants. But a graver consideration may here arise, touching the political as well as legal vassalage of the nation. The legal profession, by a very natural tendency, absorbs all political office and emolument. The habit of public discussion, and the transaction of public business, give to the professional jurist a facility and confidence, which too many good-natured folks regard as the highest qualifications for confidential trusts; and he stands out the most prominent man for whatever lucrative or honorable station may be thought worthy of his talents. His boldness prompts him to pretension, while the modesty of the private citizen opposes no obstacle to his ambition, and he soon finds himself installed in a place, which, had virtue and true merit alone been consulted, might have been possessed by some less assuming aspirant. Thus it is, that all our public offices are filled with this class of our citizens, and all the emoluments of the government are in their hands. We do not use this as an argument, "ad hominem"-for virtue is not necessarily excluded from the profession. We wish only to show the political surveillance that this class exercises over the people at large, the ulterior consequences of which it is disagreeable to predict. Nor would we wish to make an invidious distinction, in a moral point of view, between the two classes of our citizens; yet it is but justice to remark, that the influence which long and confirmed habits of prevarication and artifice naturally exert upon the mind, renders the professional lawyer less worthy of public confidence than the plain and uncontaminated private citizen. If the former occupies the halls of legislation and the public councils of the nation with long and well-digested harangues, that tickle the ear or challenge the admiration of some young Pericles, it is often at the expense of sound sense and judgment, calculated to engender a false taste

for the light and frivolous, and disparage the simple Roman manners of a republican people. Again, the almost inevitable promotion that follows in the wake of the legal profession, is calculated to paralyze the energies of the non-professional classes, and prevent that acquaintance with political science, which would result from a different system, and which it is the interest and policy of every good government to foster in its citizens, as the surest guaranty of perpetuity. It forces all the ambitious young men of our country into the legal profession, not (as it should be) with the view to benefit the country, or aid in the due administration of the laws, but with the intention of making it a stepping-stone to office and to distinction. Many enter the bureau of some veteran practitioner, and read a few months in hopes to acquire the credit for legal knowledge sufficient to recommend them to the favorable consideration of the public, while others essay the profession until they are made sensible of a want of talents to ensure success at a game, where thousands of adroit gamesters are playing, when they withdraw, and hold themselves, as they are generally held, qualified candidates for any political station that may be created, or vacated by death, removal or resignation. The consequence is, that the legal profession is with us greatly redundant, and a sordid competition is constantly kept up at the expense of the community. But to return; we do not greatly err in regarding our trials at law, in connection with the grand objects for which they were instituted, as the most splendid farce now acted in America, by legal sanction, and were we not long used to them, they would appear in all their ludicrous absurdity. They might be proper for a diplomatic council, where each party was striving to deceive or wheedle the other, in order to facilitate his selfish objects of national aggrandizement; but as a council where the citizens of the same government are to receive equal and impartial justice, they are farcical in the extreme. Here every species of influence, trick, or artifice, that can amuse the fancy, cajole the passions, or warm the heart to sympathy, are permitted to be used with the professed design to bias the mind of the judges; and were this design not in some degree accomplished, it would be wonderful that any could be found to pay the cost of the experiment. Lastly, the ruinous cost of such an establishment, (apart from the deleterious influence which it exerts upon our judicial investigations, and the political independence of our citizens,) might afford a pretext for questioning its propriety. The honest plaintiff, who has indulged his debtor till indulgence has ceased to be a virtue; who has, through good will and a desire to enable him to pay without unnecessary cost, waited till he is likely to lose his claim by procrastination, must now fee some barrister with 5 to 10 per cent. of his debt to have it collected, making a heavier tax upon him than would naturally be thrown upon the debtor by the necessary expenses of the suit. But the debtor, now become the defendant, finding that he can still protract the fraud and injustice of non-payment, and annoy and vex his kind creditor, fees another barrister, who, without any just cause for delay, enters a plea for his client, for which he charges him ten dollars, and estops the plaintiff till another term of the court, at which he still labors for some unreal cause to continue the suit and enhance the cost of the parties. Should he fail, he now advises an appeal, while he raises his fee to keep pace with the dignity of the higher court; and when it has at last run the ladder of the judicial scale, it is possibly remanded to the jurisdiction of the original court, where it is to be decided; and thus is litigation protracted, till the lawyers have the better share of the debt. Could the expense of such