Burke, in 1785, speaking of the English colonies in America, declared that "In no country, perhaps, in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful.”

Not only is the complaint that the profession is crowded an old one, but it seems to be a general one. Complaint is being made in Germany that too many students in that country are studying law. In Germany, until recently, the number of practicing lawyers was limited by law to that number which in the judgment of the court was necessary to transact the legal business of the community. Since this limitation was removed students have been flocking to the study of the law to such an extent that the Government is now actively exerting itself to discourage them from so doing. The University of Berlin had only 348 students of law in 1860, while in 1881 the number reached 1,441 in that university alone.

The same complaint is heard in England. The London Times talks about the people of England as being "lawyer-ridden." And yet England with a population of over 20,000,000 has only 12,000 lawyers, while the state of New York with 5,000,000 of inhabitants has 9,000 lawyers.

The complaint is not made against the legal profession only. It is asserted, too, of the medical profession.

There is no country in the world where the proportion of physicians to the whole population is as large as it is in the United States. The proportion is two and a half times greater in this country than it is in some of the great European nations.

The legal profession in America has always been numerically weaker than either the profession of medicine or theology. By the census of 1880 the number of lawyers in the United States is given as 64,137, the number of clergymen as 64,698, and the number of physicians and surgeons as 85,671.

But the most important fact in this connection is that while the legal profession is numerically weaker than the

profession of medicine, and of theology, it has been increasing in numbers during the last thirty years more rapidly than either of the other professions, and out of proportion to the increase in the population of the country. In 1850 there is said to have been one lawyer to 964 people, one clergyman to 864, and one doctor to 569. In 1860, one lawyer to 947 people, one clergyman to 837, one doctor to 566. In 1870, one lawyer to 949 people, one clergyman to 879, and one doctor to 618. In 1880, one lawyer to 782 people, one clergyman to 775, and one doctor to 585 people. The number of physicians in the United States, in 1880, in proportion to the whole number of people was not as great as it was in 1850; the number of clergymen was somewhat greater, while the number of lawyers was considerably greater.

These figures alone afford no answer to the question whether the legal profession is over-crowded. Has legal business increased in a ratio corresponding to the increase in the number of those who do the business? If it has, is it as equally distributed throughout the profession, or is it more largely concentrated in the hands of a few, according to the maxim 'To him that hath shall be given'?

It certainly is true that never before in the history of the profession has the practice of the law been more lucrative than it is at the present time. A half century ago a fee of ten thousand dollars was probably unknown. Now cases are frequently tried which involve millions of property, and the fee corresponds with the amount involved. In the cases tried last year growing out of the wrecking of the Missouri Pacific Railway the lawyers are said to have received fees amounting to $1,000,000. In the recent MariéGarrison suit the defendants paid nearly half a million of dollars to their attorneys.

THE LAWYER AND THE STATE.

Rufus Choate said of the legal profession that better than any other calling in life it enabled its members to

serve the state. It is this, he says, which "raises it from a mere calling by which bread, farm, and social place may be earned, to a function by which the republic may be served. It raises it from a dexterous art and a subtle, and flexible science, from a cunning logic, a gilded rhetoric, and an ambitious learning, wearing the purple robe of the sophists, and letting itself to hire,-to the dignity of almost a department of government,-an instrumentality of the state for the well being and conservation of the state." And in the pages of history we shall find abundant justification of the tribute thus expressed.

There are, as you are aware, two great systems of jurisprudence, the system of the English common law and that of the Roman civil law. Happily for the cause of true liberty the civil law was never able to supplant the common law in England, else would the history of English institutions been very different indeed. The credit is due to the common lawyers of England that they withstood and defeated the ecclesiastics in their attempts to fasten upon the people the Roman system of jurisprudence. The foreign clergy who came into England during the reigns of the Conqueror and his two sons, were ignorant of the common law but well versed in the civil law. They threw all their influence in favor of Roman jurisprudence, banished the study of the common law from the monasteries and universities, introducing in its place the study of the civil law. As the administration of justice was mainly in the hands of the clergy they would have succeeded in their attempt had it not been for the lawyers who insisted on maintaining the old system of the common law, and who being excluded from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, formed a collegiate body of their own, for the study of the common law, which was known as the Inns of Court and Chancery.

One of the grandest passages in all English history is that which records how Coke carried through Parliament the Petition of Right, the second Magna Charta of Eng

lish liberties. When James I. sought to subvert a government of laws by the issuance of proclamations, Coke preserved the safeguards of English liberty by answering him thus: "The King cannot change any part of the common law, nor create any offense by his proclamation which was not an offense before, without Parliament." James exclaims in rage: "Then am I to be under the law, which it is treason to affirm?" And Coke courageously answers him: "Thus wrote Bracton, Rex non debit esse sub homine, sed sub DEO ET LEGE?"

The acquittal of the seven Bishops, in June, 1688, as much marks an epoch in English history as does the battle of Waterloo. The victory gained by Pemberton, Pollexfen, and John Somers was worth infinitely more to the people of England than many a famous victory won amid the clash of arms and on fields of blood.

In 1792, the government of Great Britain instituted the famous prosecution of Thomas Paine. A retainer for the defendant was sent to Erskine, and the Prince of Wales urged him to decline its acceptance, but to no purpose. "I will forever, at all hazards," exclaims Erskine, "assert the dignity, independence, and integrity of the English bar, without which, impartial justice, the most valuable part of the English constitution, can have no existence. From the moment that any advocate can be permitted to say that he will or will not stand between the crown and the subject arraigned in the court where he daily sits to practice, from that moment the liberties of England are at an end."

To say that the British constitution has been preserved by the bar, is to speak within the bounds of truth and soberness.

Those who have studied the history of the French Revolution have learned that it was the lawyers who mainly contributed to the overthrow of the French monarchy in 1789. In every district of France they preached the doctrine of the Revolution and were the real leaders.

of the people. When the States-general assembled, the great majority of the members in the third-estate were lawyers. "There is," says Carlyle, "a new recognized noblesse of lawyers whose gala-day and proud battle-day even now is." From that time to this the lawyers have been the most dangerous enemies which the aristocracy and the monarchy have had to encounter in France.

In this country the controversies which terminated in the war of the revolution were upon questions of law. The colonists complained of a violation of their legal and constitutional rights, and the champions of the people were the lawyers who instructed them as to their rights and inspired them to resist their violation. In all the colonies the lawyers became the leaders of the people in their revolt against the tyranny of the mother country. It was from the lawyers that the colonists learned that when they emigrated to America they brought with them the common law for their protection. It was the lawyers who taught the people that they were entitled to claim the privileges of Magna Charta, and that there could be no taxation without representation. When it was sought to transport the colonists from America to Great Britain, it was again. the lawyers who taught them that by English law one accused of crime was entitled to a trial by a jury of the vicinage And it was they who taught them that by English law the premises of the people were not exposed to searches, nor their persons, papers, or property to seizures on general warrants. When James Otis, in 1761, made his famous argument against writs of assistance, he is said to have laid the first log of the pile which afterwards made the great blaze of the Revolution "American independance," so declared John Adams, who listened to the argument, "was then and there born. The seeds of patriots and heroes, to defend the non sine diis animosus infans, to defend the vigorous youth, were then and there sown. When independence was secured and it became necessary to lay anew the foundations of government, the law