The Sun.
London, England, 1865-03-06 00:00:00

bly the Inns of Court are behind all other profes

sions and public places of emoluments in investing
thousands, as they do every year, with the power
of defending life and property, without even taking
the trouble to investigate whether those upon whom
they so intrust so mighty a responsibility are capable
of ever knowing the distinction been law and equity,
or the meaning of the technical terms made use of in
our books on the law of real property. It may well

be worthy of consideration how far it is expedien
to continue the present system of dividing the lega

profession into two branches, or, at any rate, of only
allowing counsel to be consulted through the inter-

vention of an attorney.

It is the interest of the public, in a country where
every one is supposed to know the law, to have as
ready as possible an access to all sources of infor-

mation. To multiply time and trouble, may be the
interest of the practitioner, but never can be that

of the client. To employ two men to do what can
be better done by one, is as little expedient in-law
as in manufactures ; such an arrangement is not a
division, but a multiplic,atioß of labour, and there-
fore of expense. Wheat, thrashed by the hand, will
obtain no higher price than wheat thfashed by
steam ; but, in law, where the process and not the
result is paid for, there is a strong inducement to
resort to a chemical instrument rather than the flail,

if such can be found to separate the grain from the
chaff. If there be two ways of doing a thing,
manufacturers, who are paid for the product, will
take the shortest ; lawyers, who are paid for accord-
ing to the amount of labour, which they can afford
to waste, the longest. We should, therefore, no

more think of rejecting any means by which
the access to law may be made easier
and cheaper than we should approve of
breaking a frame or smashing a thrashing
or reaping machine. Law will always be dear
enough, without raising it to an artificial price by
fictitious restrictions. How ill does this shutting
out the public from the Bar accord with the spirit of
our new institutions. Parliament is doing all it
can to cheapen and expedite the decision upon rights,
while the etiquette of the Bar renders the previous
knowledge of those rights as difficult and expensive
as possible. If your case involves a point of law
you may get a decision on it before a County Court
for almost as few shillings as an opinion would cost
pounds, the Lion's share of the said pounds being
reserved for the person who smooths the approach
of the oracle, and not for the oracle itself. Nine
tenths of the money spent in obtaining an opinion
are spent in removing artifiical difficulties interposed
between the client and the barrister, the other tenth
is for the opinion itself. Some people are of
opinion that these exactions are willingly paid. We
believe, on the other hand, that while the public
never grudge fair remuneration to those who do its
work, there is no money parted with so unwillingly
by as that which goes to defray expenses incurred
for legal proceedings needlessly and vexatiously
landiously
complicated. The ablest physician in the
is accessible to the humblest patient who can
pay for his advice, and the -public would
have every reason to complain if they were
denied access except through the intervention
of an agent, who should demand for placing them
in communication with him a sum many times the
amount of his fee. It has never been proposed to
prevent free access to the attorney. Place the
eteseblaer-
rister on an equal footing, and let the public
between them. This is no time-honoured practice ;
the rule of etiquette in question is of comparatively
recent origin. Sir MATTHEW HALE (as appears
from Lord CAMPBELL'S " Lives of the Chief
Justices") received fees directly from his clients,
and POPE, a century later, in his imitations of
HORACE, represents himself as taking the opinion of
hwos
nt," ne to,u"
learnednwseilthoutafee,
inthe law, who advises, " as is
" clearly implying that the
omission of such a demand
was a matter of personal
kindness to himself.
We have seen how dearly the
client pays for the luxury of laying his case before
the barrister by means of an attorney. Let us
next see what he gets in exchange f,r his money.

We have shown that the interposition of a third
party does no good. We have, at any rate, a right
to expect that, with the exception of the additional
expense and delay, it should do no harm. The
person in whose hands those who require legal ad-

vice place their case, acquired by that
single Act the virtual power of directing and
managing the whole affair from first to last.
He is not trusted by halves. But to this trust there
exists a corresponding duty, great in proportion to
the extent and completeness of the confidence re-
posed. It becomes the duty of the attorney not
faithfully to administer the funds of his client, but
to apply those funds in obtaining for him the very
best legal advice and assistance which money can
procure. This is no question of patronage or favour

—the duty is clear and explicit ; and in proportion
as other motives than the fitness of the advocate or
adviser selected are allowed to enter into the choice,
the client is injured and the trust betrayed. How
have the attorneys to whom is delegated the trust
of selecting from the whole Bar of England the men
most competent to assist their clients, discharged
this delicate and important trust ? The truth is
only too notorious. At first, and before a roll of
men grew up habituated to the new system, merit
was allowed its due weight, and the man who knew
how to improve a fair trial and opportunity sprang
at once into fame and opulence. This golden age
was gradually surrendered by a period in which
merit was less regarded, and indirect influence more.
But the days in which practice could be obtained
by servile compliance are also gone, and in the iron
age in which we live the spirit of nepotism is
completely triumphant. Attorneys, and those too
occupying the most reputable places in the profession,
have sons, brothers, sons-in-law, and grandsons in
abundance among them to divide the only profits
entrusted to them by their clients for obtaining the
ablest legal advice. At the present day the happy
cadets of these great legal houses are almost the
only persons who can be said to obtain a fair start in
the profession. It is not failure that the Barrister
has to apprehend : it is the impossibility of obtain-
ing a trial. Many years ago we remember a legal
periodical stating that "of the 3,400 barristers
whose names appear in the Law List,' how few
are there in the present day who are allowed to enter
the lists for the prizes of the noble profession. The
race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong,
because the swift and the strong are doomed to
stand idly by and see the prizes which ought to be
theirs contended for by the public and by the slow."
So wrote a legal periodical some 14 or 15 years ago,
and we may in good truth say it is as true now as
when it was written all those years ago. What is
this but a miserable compromise between duty and
inclination. The public have a right to get
the best men for their money, and this
they certainly do not get under the present
system. The broker who, undertaking to go into
the market for them, deals with his relations,
and only too frequently obtains a worse
article at a higher price. It has been said by a
facetious judge, that everything is now given ac-
cording to the statute of distributions, and so
completely has this patronage come to be consi-
dered appurtenant to an attorney's practice, that
it was virtually once reported to have made the
subject of a settlement, in which the father-in-
law intended to give his son-in-law £l,OOO per
annum practice, or, failing that, to making it up
out of his own pocket. Would CICERO, DE-
MOSTHENES, ERSKINE, Or FOLLETT have competed
successfully with the son-of-law of this honest
gentleman? Nor is this all ; not merely is the

discretion of siluting advisers and advocates thus
notoriously abused, but in either case the money
of the client is misappropriated. This is a very
old and serious charge of many years' standing, but
nevertheless we will give an authority for it. In
an old number of the Law Review, for the year
1851, a periodical of the highest respectability,
will be found a list of cases which sufficiently
establish that it is the practice of many firms,
and those of the highest apparent respectability, de-
liberately to withhold from counsel fees which have
been paid to them by their clients. By virtue of
their control over the Bar, and through the impu-
nity afforded by the foolish rule of etiquette which

,reats a fee distinctly promised and honestly earned

as a mere gratuity, the payment of which cannot be
enforced, it is now evident that very large sums of
money on allowance of fees have been oftentimes
interrupted and misapplied. It is not necessary to
comment on such a fact, nor to show how such a
system, offering temptations to peculation, which
have been found so irresistible, tends to debauch
the morals of our honourable professions, and to
render its culpable members unfit for the confi-
dence of honest men. This is not merely a ques-
tion between the two branches of the profession.
The public has an interest that money obtained
from it for one purpose should not be diverted to
another, and that the Bar should not sink into
a mere appendange of the lower branch of the
profession, or into a mere band of sycophants,
content to have doled out to them as a favour a
small portion of that which belongs to them as a
right ; and if these things are not indifferent to
the public, much more are they important to the
bar, which by this self-denying ordinance has
mostcon
contrived to plac3 itself in a position at once so
dependantduty andof t
hd
ei s hl oa nwoyu re
ra bils that e .
The
srespect-
ablet,
of iuri u
and to the voluntary resignation of th.s duty by
the Bar the disorders and abuses which we have
pointed out may be traced. We trust they
will
lose no time in resuming the position of which a
mistaken feeling of delicacy has deprived them.