The Portland daily press., 1872-04-09
TIL E PRESS,
TUESDAY MORNING, APRIL ., 1879
"And Some in Gowns.'

:.
And so the st. Louis lawyers are actually
going to put on gowns! So long, too, after
the western Hemisphere have congratulated
itself on happily escaping from all that sort of
thing!- So long after witchcraft, kings, feti-
chism, titled nobility, tattooing, religious per-
secution, class privilege, benefit of clergy,
slavery and human sacrifices has been out of
fashion! 1t is now about three-quarters of a
century since Thomas jefferson thought he
had put an end to all merely adventitious sup
ports OF official position and authority when
he rode on horseback, unattended, 10 the
capitol, on the occasion of his first inaugural
ton, hitched his horse to convenient fence
and, clad in plain but decent apparel, strode
gravely to the spot where he was to become
invested with kingly power. 1t may be said
truly enough that the return of the lawyers
of st. Louis to the traditional vestments OF
their guild will not restore America to the
British crown or instantly provide us with a
House of Lords. But the lawyers gown is
one of the rags and tatteis of obsolete and
defunct denominations, after all, and it is pue-
rile, if nothing worse, to don it again. A few
of these purple rags of the old bad times and
customs remain; accidentally left, the greater
part of them, when the Revolution swept
nearly all such rubbish out of the country
None of them are of very great importance I;
but among them may be mentioned ''His
Excellency" as the official title of the Cover
nor of Massachusetts; the same title confer
red by usage ON the President of the
United States and by snobbery on the
Governors of the several States; the
gowns of the Judges of the United States
Supreme Court, that stronghold of conserva-
tism; the common titles conferred in recog-
milton of official distinction, like Esquire
and the much abnsed Honorable" There
is curious exhibition of opposite tendencies
in the advent of the gown at the West sever
al years after the United States Senate direct
ed the now meaningless abbreviation, "Hon.,"
to be omitted before the names of its MEM
bers on the official records of that body.
But some of the trivial remnants of the
old social and political fabric that are occa-
sionally stumbled against in this new world
they are old furniture that has been overlooked.
They have been deliberately brought back.
like The lawyers gown, as means of insidi-
ously taking the keen edge off from our de-
mocracy. So far as the matter of dress is
concerned, it is very important. Undoubted-
ly the plain attire which was in the beginning
tacitly accepted by Americans as the dress
alike of millionaire and well-clad laborer, has
done much towards preserving democratic
equality in America Your gowns, wigs,
robes and liveries stimulate a morbid latent
taste which exists for titles, coronets, crowns,
palaces and princes. Where. judges wear
horse-hair wigs, the lawyers dress themselves
in gowns and the Chief Magistrate puts on
robes more or less like those seen in the we'll
known portrait of Louis XIV, the natural
accessories and accomplishments are immense
salaries, unjust privileges, despotic institu-
tions, ushers, pursuivants, lords-in-waiting
royal receptions and-popular ignorance and
distress. One need be no Red Republican or
sansculottist to believe these things. How
outward forms and appearances impress the
common imagination and confuse and weaken
the common Judgment is well known. A
philosophy of clothes,' such as Carlyle's
Herr Teufesdrockh alone could write, would
show clearly that the St. Louis movement
has its origin in a knowledge of human ma
ture, A monarch never seen in ANYTHING
but plain black suit would with more diff
Guilty persuade the millions of his subjects to
toll and suffer and die for his comfort, secu-
rity or the satisfaction of his caprice He
puts on the royal robes as the 'medicine-man"
of the Indians covers himself with belts of
wampum in order that the question of per-
sonal worth and personal performance may
not be raised, the mind being occupied by the
glories and mysteries of the external adorn-
ment. The Jew enlarged his phylacteries
for the same purpose. Ana in the case of
these crafty St. Louis lawyers, how ,nnch
more willingly and promptly viii the rustic
client pay ten dollars to tremendous fellow,
mysteriously clothed in gown and bag-wig,
than he would pay five to plain person like
himself, in raiment displaying the natural
bifuroation or the human frame!