THE opinion prevails pretty generally, among the older class of lawyers, that the Bar of this country is deteriorating in learning, eloquence and character. This opinion is attributable in part to the reverence for by-gone days and by-gone men, which forms so prominent and harmless a trait in the habits of thought and expression indulged by those who are about to pass from the stage of action. They are always glorifying the golden years of their youth; and their auditors, catching some of their inspiration, are wont to regard the actors in those earlier times as superior to the every-day persons whom they see around them. In all this there is nothing peculiar to the present generation. It was ever thus, and ever will be thus, from age to age, "to the last syllable of recorded time." Another source whence springs the opinion to which we have alluded, is the fact, that the bar in our day does not stand so far above the mass of the people in regard to general intelligence, oratorical gifts, and knowledge of the law itself, as it did fifty, or even thirty years ago. During this period the common mind of the country has received a mighty upward bound. Education is now widely diffused. The works of masters in the arts and sciences, and the productions of accomplished writers in every branch of literature, circulate through all the avenues of society, and at prices which bring them within the reach of the humbler classes. Newspapers, "the poor man's encyclopedia," and periodicals of every grade, and devoted to all conceivable subjects, are as omnipresent as the circumambient air. Then, too, the nation is converted into one great debating society, one grand mass convention, where nobody's seat is contested, where everybody is always in order, where the utmost freedom of speech is allowed, and where all sorts of questions, important, unimportant, and indifferent, are discussed, according to the several tastes of the disputants. Notwithstanding the abuses and absurdities that have been generated by this universal fermentation of the national mind, it has evolved many valuable principles, many rare facts, and has diffused through the masses of the community an incalculable amount of import ant information. It has, moreover, given to the common intellect of the country an independence of thought, a boldness of speculation, an ardor of investigation, in respect to old things and new things, which neither allows its instructors to beg the question in dispute, nor begs their pardon for disputing their premises or denying their conclusions. The three learned professions, law, medicine, and divinity, have seen their ancient monopolies and cherished mysteries subjected to the tests of scrutiny and utility set up by those who somewhat irreverently take nothing for granted, and demand that everything shall be proved. Especially is this true of the system of jurisprudence which we borrowed from our transAtlantic ancestors. During the past twenty years it has had to run the gauntlet of legislatures and organic conventions in nearly every state of the Union, with the cry of "Reform !" "Reform !" resounding at its heels. To an extent not dreamed of at the dawning of the present century, the people have taken the work of remodeling the whole body of American law into their own hands. They may have performed some portions of their task unskilfully; but the labor has resulted in giving them a knowledge of the outlines, and glimpses at least of the details of the judicial systems of the country. If these things be so, then it may well be true, that though the American bar has not positively deteriorated in learning and eloquence, yet, because of the upward tendency of the whole body of the people, the relative distance between them may be very sensibly diminished, and, therefore, in the estimation of those who do not carefully survey the whole ground, the bar will seem to occupy à lower position than in the halcyon days of its undisputed supremacy, when Marshall took his seat on the Supreme bench at Washington, and Hamilton delighted select audiences by his luminous logic in the City Hall of New-York, while the people left the work of le gislation to lawyers, and regarded the occult mysteries of jurisprudence as something too sacred for unlearned hands to touch, and too awful for uninitiated eyes to scan. It may, nevertheless, be true, that owing to the undoubted increase of the number of legal practitioners, when compared with the increase of population, and owing to the greater ease with which admission to the bar is now gained, in consequence of the gradual diminution and relaxation of the tests of membership, we say, it may be true, that every lawyer in our day is not as learned as was every lawyer in those times when the rules of admission were more stringent in their nature and more rigidly enforced. Admitting this to be so, it may still be doubted whether the really-learned and competent members of the profession are injured in any way by the abolishment of the old monopoly of the bar, while it admits hardly of a question, that the legal reforms, and especially in the modes of procedure, of which this abolition was a part, tend powerfully to promote the ends of justice, by rendering the science of the law less occult, and its practice less difficult. The age is gone by when the opinion will be tolerated, that the main end, or even an end to be sought by a system of jurisprudence, is the establishment of an abstruse science, and the creation of an "order" of men to practice it. It is now demanded, that the prime object of the law and its ministers, shall be, to mete out speedy and exact justice between man and man; that judges shall disregard the technicalities and crotchets of a scholastic age, and make forms yield to substance, in determining the mer |