The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-05-22
NO LAWYER CAN BE A RADICAL.

To be a sound lawyer and sound radical
at the same time, was always mental impos-
sibility. The editor of Wilkes Spirit of the
Times thinks in too narrow circle to seize
so comprehensive a truth as this. But, with
in his limited range of partisan investigation,
he has discovered that, in so far as member
of the Republican party is proficient and re-
spectacle as a votary of legal science, pre-
cisely in so far is that member untitled for
association with the dominant radical leader
ship of the party. And such is substantially
the announcement of an editorial which APP
pears in the Spirit Of the Times of the 10th,
headed, "Treachery in the Senate-The Law
yers' Conspiracy against the Constitution.
After remarking that "for some time past it
has been evident that a new political con-
spiracy was brewing" and that Z" the first
symptoms of this disafection were the singu-
lar desertions of the lawyers Cowan, Doolittle
and Dixon, followed by the quasi detection of
Foster, of Connecticut" and that these were
preliminary to a still farther and more signal
detection, the writer declares "That devel-
opment was made on Monday last, in the
course pursued by Messrs. Grimes, Fessen-
den and Trumbull, three more old lawyers,
under the patronage of the chief justice, who
is at once the head of the profession and their
faction" The significance of this language is
deeper than the writer's meaning. Moved by
an instructive suspicion that the spirit of
true lawyer and the spirit of a true radical
cannot inhabit the same body, he means to
point the mahgnity of radical zealots against
every lawyer who appreciates the dignity of his
profession and sincerely respects the solemn
sanctions and obligations of law. And he has
good eause, from the standpoint of a radical
journalist, for wishing to excite this hostility.
To be sure, pettifoggers and shysters may
make very serviceable adherents of radicalism.
They do not pretend to comprehend the
philosophy of law. Their business is simply
to acquire enough knowledge of law to ena-
bic them to evade its requirements and to
twist its technicalities to the service of viii
lainy. Butler is distinguished example of
what lawyers Of this order-if such they may
be called-can contribute to the radica
cause in the way of ingenious and unscrupu-
lous devices. But the legal mind, to use this
designation in its high and honorable sense,
is essentially and invincibly anti-radical. 1t
can no more sympathize or fuse with the
looseness of radical thought and the license
| OF radical intent and action, than light can
coexist with darkness, order with disorder,
statesmanlike discretion with criminal reck-
| lessness, regulated liberty with illimitable
despotism. The legal mind, analyzing the
force Of which the radical leaders are expo
nents, cannot fail to perceive that, in its
final development, radicalism can mean
nothing less than the humiliation of both
law and liberty. For already the radical
faction acknowledge no law but their own
capricious and uncertain desires and i'm
| pulses, and allow to other people no liberty
but the liberty of conforming to these i'm
pulses and desires. But true law is based
upon known and substantial facts, and aims
to be as definite and Interchangeable as the
nature of these facts will admit it to be. And
true liberty can only live in an atmosphere OF
law. Radicalism, therefore, must signify in
its last results, death to both law and liberty,
and the Inauguration either of universal
chaos or universal despotism. The Spirit OF
the Times may well sound the alarm at the
discovery of what it is pleased to call the
Lawyers conspiracy" for there is no lawyer
in the country, if worthy, by reason Of
intelligence, learning and mental discipline,
to be called such, who can be other than the
enemy of the radical cause of which that
journal is an organ and sentinel.