oppressed. But this semblance of virtue can prevail only for a time; nothing but truth can permanently succeed.

A good or great barrister should write, as well as speak, with elegance, precision, and energy: he should know how to come press or to dilate his style as the occasion may require: be must answer technical queries, and give opinions in cases that are laid before him, with clearness and brevity; so as to give his clients as much information sa the business as possible, and to convince those by whom he is employed, that he sees the whole scope and very jet of their case On the contrary, in many speeches on cri

"A good and great barrister must have both special knowledge of legal forms and precedents, and an enlarged view of the principles of morality and policy, of justice and utility, on which all jurisprudence is or ought to be founded. Beside having a thorough and intimate knowledge of these general principles and particular laws, die must have a ready recollection and skill in applying each precedent to the peculiar case, which le is to advocate; for while he feels the spirit, he must adhere to the letter of the law. In the most complicated and obscure cases, he must be capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood, and of making the distinction palpable to men of gross understand-inal causes, and in many political trials, ing, as well as to persons of the most practised judgment. To accomplish this, he most be able to separate the essential circumstances from the adventitious, to throw out of his consideration what is not necessary, and to arrange the parts, so as to show in a clear manner the connection and value of the evidence, the weight and number of proofs, and the force of the moral and legal arguments deducible from the whole. Among arious opposite probabilities and contrary evidence, he must be able quickly to strike e just balance. He must have the power of exercising his judgment, and all his intellecqual faculties, in public as well as in pri vate; in the midst of noise, bustle, contra

diction, and confusion, as well as in the aranquillity of the closet. He must be able, not only to think, but to speak well in pub

lic.

He must be an orator, qualified to convince by reasoning with all the closeness of mathematical demonstration, to persuade by touching the passions, and to amuse by seizing those looser analogies which please The imagination. He must be capable of illustrating an obscure and enlivening a dull cause; therefore he must know how alterately to relieve. the attention of his audience

by literary allusions, and to lighten upon his

subject with flashes of wit. Beside possess Ang talents, learning, and various knowledge, the must be, or he must appear to be, a man of candour and probity, and not deficient in sensibility. Cicero, with a natural enthusiasm for his own profession, asserted that a great drator must be a good man. Examples, alas! in too many iustances, may be cited in contradiction of this maxim; and experience obliges us to acknowledge, that to scem will sometimes answer the purpose al most as well as to be. A great orator must be a good actor, if he be not a good mang ch must at least seem to feel virtuous iudig nation, or he will never be able to excite sympathy in the cause of the injured and

more oratory is to be displayed than leara ing; and a barrister, when he revises such harangues for publication, must be able to avoid technical phraseology, and to write popular declamation and pathetic appeals to the passions." p. 281, 282.

This list of qualifications is suffciently formidable; and if none who want them have any title to succeed, certain young gentlemen should not wonder, that, like Juas Fernandez, they are 44 80 unac

customed to speech," they almost "start at the sound of their own." But let parents and instructors takę comfort; for Mr. Edgeworth is fully persuaded that " they may all be attained by any pupil whose education is well conducted from his earliest youth, and who has not some obvious deficiency of intellect."

The guardians of the young law yer should begin by committing him to the charge of some instructor who speaks pure English, and with a correct accent; as any

thing provincial or vulgar in his

His

dialect would be a death-blow to his reputation as an orator. memory should be carefully cultivated; and he should be accustomed, even in trifling things, to produce the authority on which he reports them. He should be practised in judging of evidence. At eight or nine years old, he is to be sent to an uitiatory school, where, although it night otherwise be desirable to relieve him from some portion of the common grammatical studies, still, as, without them he cannot maintain his proper rank among his

school-fellows, he must be well drilled and disciplined in grammar. For ourselves, we are well convinced that the disgust taken by boys to the dead languages often originates in their long previous apprenticeship to grammar; and that we should do well in some degree to teach boys the principles of grammar as they find the want of them. But whilst the habits of schools and universities continue what they are, and boys must be sent to them, the private instructor will feel it necessary to accommodate his instructions, in a great degree, to the reigning systemi

Mr. Edgeworth does not urge the point of making the young lawyer a great linguist, and expresses a hope that the example of Sir W. Jones may not be considered as supplying the only model on which a lawyer, can be formed. On the importance of general knowledge of all kinds, he dwells with becoming earnest ness. In the practice of a lawyer andoubtedly every species of reading is put into a state of requisition, and his ignorance of a single art or science may, in some particular cases, go near to ruin a cause. The author them alludes to two different courses, which, at different periods, have been pursued in the education of lawyers. At one period it was usual to launch the young student, just escaped from college, into the vast ocean of law, without a star or compass to guide him. In consequence of this, multitudes preferred the pleasures or vices of the metropolis to

what is more, removed them, by the publication of his Commentaries. This work is now the polar star of the young lawyer; and though it by no means supersedes other readings, it guides the student in every step of his progress. It is certainly happy for a young lawyer that he is born after Blackstone. The author thinks both logic and mathematics important to the law student; but especially (for he is an Oxonian) the former. If he himself knew any

thing of physies, he would have known that there was a sufficient degree of inexactness and looseness in them, to remove all apprehensions from those who tremble at the influence of physical studies upon the mind.

In attendance upon lectures, the student is recommended rather to hear with attention and reflection, than to transcribe all he hears, as the last habit is infinitely less favourable to a spirit of investigation and philosophizing.

It is desirable that students of all classes, and particularly lawyers, should converse much: and that the maxim of Bacon be ever remembered, "Reading makes a full, writing an exact, and speaking a ready man." Now, it really matters nothing, that a lawyer can think or write, if he cannot speak. In his situation, it is of little use to have a bank of letters on which he can draw, if, at the same time, he have none of the money of ordinary and current conversation

Order in composition is strongly, and very properly, inculcated upon the young lawyer; and the great Chancellor d'Aguesseau is quoted," as having said, that, "by a secret Hinking together of propositions, equally simple and evident, the mind is led from truths to truths, so, that we are surprised to see that method alone has served for proof, and that order alone has produced conviction." It is incredible that' the importance of order has not been more universally recognized. The great body of the modern clergy of

the church of England, till Claude's Essay opened their eyes, continued to write, from Sunday to Sunday, a sort of loose, running, desultory ha rangue, which, for want of arrange ment, was sure never to be carried

beyond the walls within which it was delivered.-The young student is next encouraged to a diligent attendance upon the courts; and although allowed occasionally to try his strength and fortify his nerves upon the arena of a debating society, he is cautioned against carrying the declamatory and sophistical habits of these societies to the bar. Fluency, however, is of such high importance to a lawyer, that he may fairly run the hazard of a debating club in order to obtain it. Some of the lawyers in the first practice both in the English and Scotch courts, were formed by the mock battles of a debating-club; and the young men of by far the highest promise at the English bar, are said to be disciplining themselves in a

similar manner for those future conflicts, by which we hope they are to defend the oppressed, and establish the truth.

The author then proceeds to vitoperate the bullying spirit in which some of our most celebrated counsel think fit to cross-examine the wit nesses. He then strongly inculcates self-government upon the student, justly observing, that no person can think his cause safe in the hands of a man in a passion. He then gives a hint too important not to be quoted.

"What portion of address is allowable, and what is discreditable; what are the bounds between laudable skill and illiberal artifice; how far an advocate should plead against his conviction; whether he should defend a cause which he knows to be unjust,' or a client whom he believes to be guilty; are questions, which every man should consider and determine for himself before be goes to the bar. He cannut take a better sime to settle these points, than while he is attending courts, and trials, where he will continually see examples, that must show him the necessity of forming rules for his own conduet. There is a certain sort of mora

lity by courtesy, which bodies of men es tablish for the mutual ease and convenience

of their conscience and their interest; and there is a jocular sort of convivial wit, which is current among professional latitudinarians, and which sometimes imposes upon those who have really some conscience. By hear ing certain breaches of common honesty, and certain arts of deception, spoken of every day without any censure, and even in a style of jovial triumph, young men insensibly confound their notions, and deaden their sense of right and wrong. Instead of judging themselves by the universal standard of morality, they are satisfied if they do nothing that is counted dishonourable by the body corporate, into which they have entered.

"In the heyday of youthful spirits, in the flow of convivial conversation, in the bustie and triumph of professional business and saccess, a man might be deaf to the small still voice of conscience; but it speaks in thunder in retirement, and in the declining years of ife. It is said, that a celebrated barrister, after he had retired from the bar, was ob served to grow extremely melancholy; and one day, when a friend noticed the dejection of his countenance, and enquired what he was thinking of, he replied, I am thinking how many honest families I have sacrificed to nisi prius victories.

"To prevent the irremediable raisery of such a reflection, a man of feeling and sense, who intends to practise at the bar, will begin by determining what he ought and what he ought not to do in bis professional character : he will not leave the decision of his conduct to chance, to the cry of a party, or the halfinebriated intellects of a set of jovial compsnious. He will observe by what rules the best of his profession have governed themselves; he will consider on what their rules ase founded; he will examine what is most for the interest of society as well as for the honour of individuals; and by this he will be guided, free from vain scruples or profligate temerity. Sir Mathew Hales's father threw up his profession, because he could not re concile his conscience to the common prac◄ tice of pleading in favour of the wrong side of a question as well as of the right. But such scrupulosity of sentiment, however it may be respected in an individual, neither can nor ought ever to be the general guide of conduct for the profession. Reason and religion are the only solid foundations for our principles; and utility the standard by which we must judge,whether out conduct and sentiments be just or erroneous. It is surely for the advantage of society, that, according to the

maxim of the English law, every man should be supposed to be innocent, till it is proved that he is guilty; this maxim should be adopted by lawyers, as well as by other members of the community. Every man should have the means of defending his cause, or else the most innocent might be. oppressed, or, in a moment of indignation against the guilty, precedents the most tyrannical and danger ous might be established. Therefore a lawyer's being merely doubtful onwhich side the right lies, should not prevent him from pleading a cause, and from urging all that can be said in its defence.

"Extraordinary cases may indeed occur, in which he would be not only justifiable, but meritorious, in refusing to plead for a client. Where he has private knowledge of circumstances, which convince him beyond a possibility of doubt, that his client's case is fraudulent, or that the accused is guilty, a lawyer is right in refusing his brief: but he should keep this refusal secret; and should take every possible means to prevent his opinion from being even suspected before

the trial is decided. It is well known that men, now as high in their profession as legal ambition can rise, have at the very commencement of their career, absolutely refused briefs, in cases where they had sufficient rea son to believe, that there was fraud or crime. This conduct, while it must have satisfied their own minds; did not, it seems, injure their professional characters, or diminish their practices. But if caprice, pusillanimity, or personal considerations of any kind, were to dictate such a refusal, the lawyer would deservedly lose his credit and his practice."

The questions here brought forward are highly important, and we should like to see them argued, by men competent to the task, upon strictly Christian principles.

The author concludes the chapter by quoting some striking maxims of Bacon on the professional duties of a lawyer: and after telling us that these maxims were written when he had resigned that high seat which he disgraced by his venality, and had leisure to philosophize, he adds, elegantly, "thus it is that great luminaries, after the time of their apparent setting, continue to enlight

en

the world from which they have retired."

The last chapter is on the education of Men for Public Life, and it thus commences: "Go,' said the CHRIST, OBSERY. No. 107.

"

Swedish Chancellor Oxenstiern to his son, who was to meet a congress of ambassadors, Go, and see with those have who govern the world."' your own eyes, how little wisdom And if the little arts, the left-handed wisdom, the crooked policy of ambassadors, is to be taken as the criterion of the talents of public men, we should agree with the chancellor; but when we consider, as in our own country, the variety, multiplicity, and the weight of their duties; the cabals by which the ruling party is watched and thwarted, the call for prompt decision, and the consequences of a single error; the necessity for judgment in counsel, for vigour in action, for economy in management, for courage to combat a foreign enemy, and eloquence to fight with domestic foes; we are disposed rather to extol than to disparage the powers of public characters, to judge their mistakes with lenity, and to witness their success (when they do succoed) with admiration. We are

quite ready, however, to join with
Mr. Edgeworth in reprobating every
man of very moderate talents, and
insufficient acquirements, who takes
advantage of peculiar opportunities
to place himself at the helm of the
state. We unfeignedly concur,
also, with the author, in commend-
ing the qualities of integrity and
disinterestedness to statesmen, and
in lamenting the apparent deficiency
of the latter in some otherwise dis-

tinguished characters of the present
day. We give our readers a taste
of Mr. Edgeworth's good, honest
sentiments upon
this point.