and he is entitled to decline such employment if he sees fit; with one exception. When he is assigned to defend an indigent prisoner by the court. That is a duty that every lawyer has to respond to. But suppose a man whose reputation is bad in the community, and whose statement can not be taken without verification, comes to employ a lawyer of ideals. His reputation ought at once to put the lawyer on inquiry as to the equity of his case and the purity of his motives in seeking to litigate it. If the lawyer of ideals finds the man is seeking him to bolster up a weak case and take advantage of his standing in the community and at the Bar for that purpose, he is entirely justified in declining the employment, on the ground that he is not convinced by reason of the facts and the evidence of them that the case justifies him in bringing it to the attention of the court. But a bad man may have a good case, and he would be left hopeless if lawyers said, "Because you are a bad man, you can not have rights which should be defended or prosecuted." It may take courage to stand up and defend the rights of a man whose reputation in the community is such as to make the community condemn him in anything he undertakes, but that is just what a lawyer of ideals should do. The profession is to assist the humble, the outcast, the outlaw, to secure justice, and the lawyer could not discharge a higher office than in securing justice for a man who would otherwise be denied it, because of conduct of his that should have no bearing upon his rights in the particular case.

It is customary, in some communities where a crime has been committed, for the person injured or his relatives, to employ counsel to assist the public prosecutor in the trial of the accused. In such a case, if the investigation of the lawyer of ideals does not convince him that the defendant is guilty, he ought not to take the case. The public prosecutor and he in such a cause occupy more of a judicial attitude than in respect to other employment. On the other hand, where a lawyer of ideals is employed in a criminal case, and especially where he is directed to act as counsel by a court in a criminal case, it is his duty, no matter what his conviction of the defendant's guilt, to see to it that the defendant is convicted according to law, and that he has the benefit of those guaranties of the constitution that are intended to protect him against unjust punishment and conviction. Even, therefore, if the defendant confesses to him his guilt, the lawyer of ideals having engaged in the cause, must examine witnesses, bring out the de

fects in the case of the state, and then point out those defects to the jury for the purpose of emphasizing the rule of law, fixed to secure the safety of every person, that the accused in a criminal case must be shown to be guilty beyond reasonable doubt to justify conviction.

There is no reason why a lawyer should not accept employment from a corporation, however large its capital, however great its plant, however wide its influence and power. A corporation is nothing but the aggregation of the capital of many under the control of a few to whom the management of the capital is entrusted. It is an artificial entity for convenience in business and unified action; and a lawyer who is defending the rights of a corporation is defending the rights of individuals.

But the regular law business of many large corporations has become so great that they have found it wise to employ regular counsel and exclude them from every other service. In this way counsel becomes as much identified with a corporation as its president or its treasurer. In the enormous expansion of the last forty years in this country, in the hurried chase for money, the bar has been affected, as all other members of society, and many lawyers have come to regard wealth as the chief end of man as well as other people; and this has affected, to some extent, the standards of the profession. It has come to be regarded more as a business than it was in older days. This has been detrimental to the standing of the Bar. Small men, men without great strength of character, who have come to be employed by corporations, have acquired a slant of view in their law, their politics and their social theories that does not conform to the general and popular view. Great strong men at the Bar, whom corporations have been fortunate enough to employ as general counsel, have doubtless maintained a judicial mental attitude. But whatever their mental bias, the public have come to treat men thus employed as belonging body and soul to the corporations. Such general counsel enjoy large salaries and it has been a great temptation, in view of what is practically a life tenure, to younger and more brilliant members of the Bar, to accept employment of this kind. It lessens the normally great influence of such able and strong men for good in a community. It takes them out of the class of eligibles for the great positions of responsibility in the public service which they are eminently qualified by character, ability and experience to fill. I venture to think that there are many of them who if they had

their lives to live over again would decline this exclusive employment by corporations and would keep themselves free to accept service everywhere, for and against corporations, and thus to occupy an independent position.

I am not in any way criticising lawyers who have accepted exclusive retainers from corporations, but I am attempting to point out the public loss that arises from this practice. Their ineligibility for public service is possibly largely due to the character of the political issues that we have had during the last twenty years, but I am hopeful that in the future the offer of a general counselship in great corporations with its limitations will not seem so tempting to the potential leaders of the Bar, and that the old-time independence of all the ablest men in the profession will be restored. We may reasonably urge that a lawyer of ideals in the future should not consent to make his life thereafter a fixed groove from which he may not vary to do his part for the common weal in politics.

In answer to the argument that a profession which holds itself out for hire in advocacy, and which must, thereafter, be engaged half the time on the wrong side of the case, can not promote justice, I affirm that without the profession, and without such advocacy on both sides, real justice could hardly be done. In the days when counsel were not paid, and interviewed under the hypocritical pretense of a disinterested desire to help the court, there was danger that the court might be misled because of their false assumption of impartiality. But where the relation of counsel to the cause as a paid advocate is understood, where the limitations upon his advocacy, as a matter of professional ethics is understood where the personal equation is plain to the court, his argument though under spur of the spirit of advocacy may be of the greatest assistance to the court. It must be remembered that each side is represented by counsel. It must be remembered that the counsel in their natural zeal have searched their brains and searched the books for arguments to sustain the causes of their respective clients. The court knows, and necessarily weighs, the natural effect upon their argument of their professional relation to the case; but this method of developing all the facts on each side and of stating with all the force possible the arguments on each side, presents to a judicial mind, disciplined in weighing arguments, skilled in the law with experience in the dissection and analysis of fact and evidence, the fullest and fairest opportunity to see the

whole case before him, and to select the stronger arguments and to decide the case correctly. The defeated advocate is quite as useful in helping the court reach the right conclusion as the one who wins. Counsel differ as men differ, and one counsel may argue a cause better than another and that inequality between them may affect the result with the court. But we can not avoid that possibility of error, because it grows out of the inequality of men. A clear-headed, learned judge, who knows the law may not be affected by that inequality A jury is more likely to be. But if the court has the proper power to control the trial and the right that he should have, to advise the jury, not only as to the law but to the facts, then even in a jury trial that inequality may be neutralized. There is no means in human ken so effective for the reaching of right conclusions by competent judges as the presentation of each case on the facts and the law, with the accompanying argument, by opposing counsel. This is recognized in the well understood rule that the judgments in those cases in which there was no argument of counsel or in which only one side was represented and presented have not the weight of authority given to other cases.

I am able to testify-I might almost say as an expert witness in this matter. For eleven years, I was on the Bench, three years on the State Bench, and eight years on the Federal Bench. For thirteen years, I was in executive office, and in the discharge of my duties in both branches of the Government, I had to render decisions in most important cases. In the Executive branch, frequently the decisions were final, but generally without the benefit of argument. The aid that the argument of paid advocates on both sides of an issue in court furnished to the reaching of a righteous and safe conclusion, I had every reason to know.

The ideals of a lawyer engaged in presenting his case to the court may be shortly stated. Of course in bringing out the evidence by the examination of witnesses, he must always conduct himself as a gentleman. He must treat the witness fairly. He must treat the court fairly and the jury fairly. It does not help the cause he represents to be a ruffian in dealing with a witness and to browbeat him. The most successful cross-examiners, and those who present their evidence best to the court and to the jury, are those who shorten their examinations by knowing the question they wish to ask, and by letting the inconsistencies of the witness show themselves, rather than by a vociferous exploitation of them

in the examination. They can be fully and effectively pointed out in the argument. There are more cases lost by over and unwise cross-examination than ever were won by it.

I don't dwell upon the ordinary restrictions upon the conduct of counsel that require him to be accurate and truthful in his statement of evidence to the court or to the jury, and prevent him from misquoting documents or misciting authorities. A lawyer of ideals has a much higher conception of his duty than merely to keep within such rules. He must maintain an intellectual self-respect in his advocacy. If he urges upon the court a view of the facts that he utterly repudiates in his heart, and thus yields to the exigency of his case, he loses his own self-respect and he frequently loses the confidence of the jury and injures his cause. He may satisfy his client. Indeed the pettyfogger by mere abuse of the other side, can often make his client think he is getting his money's worth.

What is true of his argument of the facts is also true in respect to his argument as to the law. He ought to maintain an intellectual self-respect as to the propositions of law that he advocates. It is easy for even a layman to see the weakness of an argument of a lawyer on the facts where he utterly ignores the weight of the evidence and all the probabilities in seeking to force a conclusion. But it is not so with respect to a legal proposition. Too many lawyers are prone, because their case requires it, to announce and support alleged principles which a learned court knows on their statement to be entirely untenable. Lawyers differ greatly in this regard. Some very able and learned lawyers in dealing with a young or weak judge will thunder out in a confident tone unsound propositions of law that fit the necessities of their case, with the hope of frightening the judge lest he show himself an ignoramus by not accepting them. Judges who sit long on the bench classify lawyers, and the lawyer of ideals is the man who maintains his self-respect in arguing his case so that he will not state any proposition of law or fact which has not a substantial basis. What is the result? Judges listen with care to the lawyer with that ideal, and in the course of a long practice, the character they make in this respect gives weight to what they say with the court that knows them. They can render to the clients who employ them service that is quite beyond the class of lawyers that have no ideals of this kind. It is they who really assist the court in coming to a just conclusion. It is they who show to the court by their argument the real difficulties in deciding for the other side and