The Express.
London, England, 1868-08-21 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, FRIDAY E

cies. A great lawyer, who to itis professional
reputation and attainments unites a larger know-
ltdge and a wider sympathy. who is net
it mere legal specialist but something more and
better, possenws unquestionably an advantage
over candidates from other professions and
ca (sere. But lawyers of that strain and temper
are scarce. There is no denying that the com-
mon run of lawyers, who seek seats in Parlia-
ment as stepping-stones to promotion, the
regular bruisers of the courte, confer very little
lustre on their profession, and still less on the House
of Commons when they got there. The best that
can be said for them is that they learn in that
High Court to be silent and modest, and booome
sadder and wiser from a sense of insignificance. •
Few of them who speak in the House speak even
with tolerable fluency or clearness ; few are
listened to with pleasure or attention ; few,
to say the ugly truth, are not unmitigated
" bores," intolerable below the gangway, toler-
able by necessity only, when they become law
officers of the Crown. Great names rise to the
memory and to the lips in contradiction of this
general remark. But one need not go farther
back than the experience of the last
session and of the law officers of the
present admiiiistration to confirm it. Nor are
lawyers—exceptions always excepted—the most
useful members of Parliament. If successful in their'
Profession, all day laboriously and anxiously en-
gaged in chambers or the courts, they come down
to the House too seldom, or too late and too jaded,
to bestow any freshness of mind upon the affairs of
the country. They have no leisure to spare
thought for the great political, social, and ad-
ministrative questions which make up the
sum of legislative labour. Their minds
are apt to work in a sharp but narrow groove,
and they have the contempt of all technical and
special practitioners for " ideas." Indeed the
tendency of the purely legal mind is decidedly
conservative if not reactionary. This tendency
has received more than ordinary encourage-
ment of late from the Tory dispensers of
patronage. Even Liberal lawyers, however, or
as they say in America, lawyers who stand on
the liberal " ticket," are' too often owner-
vatives of something worse when it is a question
of law reform.% It is not until they have emerged
from the region of briefs and fees that they begin
to apply right reason and conscience to questions
which concern alike the ends of justice, the
emoluments of the profession, and the interests of
suitors. Law reforms are regarded by lawyers in
Parliament from the strictly Trades Union point
of view. It is not too much to say that but for
the resistance of the legal interest in the House
of Commons many law reforms for which the
country has waited for years, and is still waiting,
would have been accomplished years ago. On the
whole, it would seem that whatever danger there
may be of having too many milliormaires in the
next Parliament, the danger of having too many
barristers is one against which it is well that con-
stituencies should be warned in time.

which the former speaks of the "judicial
,"severity maintained by the ListOpitiverusaceik",
illicit, he says, " has /Cndell,iojeinbarrass the
" friendly relations betiveen the tvio 'countries and
"to protract the point al excite/sent" in tile
British provinces. Bnolosed in this &spat& *si
the resolution of the House of IfisPrisentati me,
requesting the PRKSIDNNT to take tnoasur .t for
effecting the release of the prisoners, an 1 such
other measures " as will secure their return to our
" flag, with such ceremonies as are apprnpriee to
" the occasion." A reply to these .00ram *Mei-
bons was sent from the Foreign-office through
Mr. Toonrrrort on the 28th ultimo. Upon the
general question of naturalisation Lord STANIAT
had- nothing to add to the statement he had
already submitted to Mr.lloaarr. As regards the
demand forth° release of WARREN and Coerau.o, it
is bared on grounds which manifest a total misoon-
ception of the facts of the case. They were not
•imprisoned simply for words spoken and acts done
in the United States (although evidence given on
theeepoints was strictly in accordance with the rules
of law), but were convicted of having come over to
Ireland and cruised along the coast with intent to
effect a landing of men and arms in that part of
the British dominions, in order to raise an insur-
rection against the Quzzw. Whether the explana-
tions given by Lord titrazatty are or are not satis-
factory to the United States government is a secret
which may possibly be divulged by the publica-
tion of the next batch of correspondent*.