Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 Excerpt:...morning, have incorporated themselves with almost every system of laws in Christendom,"--these are the materials which Judge Rose handles with a master hand; and as "the great product of the middle ages" is unfolded before us, we cannot but feel a deeper love of constitutional liberty which took its rise from this great source. If to the barons in their contest with John, we owe the beginnings of liberty protected by law, it is to the lawyers that we are indebted for the preservation of that liberty from the days of Magna Charta to the present, if we can trust the judgment of Chas. M. Blackford of Lynchburg, speaking to the bar of North Carolina. One begins to understand why, in English-speaking countries, the law has always been regarded as so high and honorable a profession, when he has rehearsed before him those great struggles wherein the liberties of men hung in the balance, and where the lawyer at the bar aud the judge upon the bench stood as a solid bulwark against oppression and tyranny of every sort, whether at the hands of an autocrat or of a still more despotic majority. Many principles of constitutional law, many highly prized rights of the citizen, which are now recognized as among our most important legacies of the past, were first asserted and maintained by a lawyer in defense of an individual client. Mr. Blackford has succeeded in grouping together a large number of such cases--monuments to the lawyers of the past, of which we of to-day may be justly proud. It is quite natural that the members of a noble profession should find in its contemplation much of encouragement, and that, in their gatherings, the profession to which they have devoted their lives, should form the subject of many a discourse. The sacerdotal character of...