Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt:...and wisdom of the bench and bar have been so determined that the light which they have shed upon this important subject from year to year has crystalized this beneficent law into a practically accepted doctrine by every nation of the world. The pathway of freedom has been blazed, and it has been the lawyer who has thus constantly throughout the centuries "sat on the whirlwind and directed the storm." Studying the share which the members of our profession have had in laying the foundations of nations, and building thereon, they would not be entitled to so large a measure of credit if their pathway had been one of continual triumph_with0ut obstacles in the way. It is because they have forged the chain of empire in the face of almost insuperable obstacles that we hail them as the greatest of conquerors. We never turn to Jewish history but we are reminded of the law--giver Moses. We study the lessons of Greek art and arms, but there rises before us in majesty the glories of Solon and Lycurgus. We honor Justinian, and scarcely remember Rome's great captains. The glory of the Code Napoleon, the product of the French Advocates, will survive long after the sun of Austerlitz shall have sunk beneath the horizon of man's memory, for "Law embodies the story of the nation's development. ' ' When Peter the Great witnessed in London the power of the courts in restricting the scope of despotism, and the influence of the lawyers in shaping the decisions of the courts, he declared that upon his return to Russia he would put to death all the lawyers in his dominion. Fanaticism of every kind has always developed strong hostility toward the legal profession. Luther speaks of lawyers as "sophists, pests of the...