every lawyer should not still be, in the best sense, a Karaite. By manifesting a reverence for the divine law, both that of reason, and that of superadded Gospel, you will do good in the world beyond what you can imagine. You will redeem your honourable profession from the injury which bad men have done to its reputation; and you will obtain a patronage for it, very different from that which the Satyr in the idle story of your Saint Evona has assigned to it. Your celebrated Ulpian wrote seven books, to show the several punishments which ought to be inflicted on Christians. It is to be hoped that you will invent as many services to be done to the causeof Christianity; services to be performed for the kingdom of your Saviour, and methods by which to demonstrate that you yourselves are among the best of Christians. I am not sure that our Tertullian was the gentleman of that name, who hath some Consulta in the Roman Digesta; which Grotius and others will not admit: yet Eusebius tells us that he was well skilled in the Roman laws: and in his writings you find many law terms, particularly" Prescriptions against Heretics," which were, as we learn from Quintillian and others, the replies of defendants to the actions of the plaintiffs. I propose that others of the faculty study all possible" Prescriptions" against those who would injure Christianity, and "apologies" for the church and cause of our Saviour. But, Sirs, it must first of all be done in your own virtuous, exact, upright conduct, under all temptations. The miscarriages of some individuals, however, must not bring a blemish on a noble and useful fession. pro But, yet many will be ready enough to allow the justness of the following censure, which occurs in a late publication, entitled, "Examen Miscellaneum :" "A lawyer who is a knave, deserves death more than a robber; for he profanes the sanctuary of the distressed, and betrays the liberties of the people." To avoid such a censure, a lawyer must shun all those indirect ways of "making haste to be rich," in which a man cannot be innocent: such ways as provoked the father of Sir Matthew Hale to abandon the practice of the law, on account of the extreme difficulty of preserving a good conscience in it. Sir, be prevailed upon constantly to keep a court of chancery in your own breast; and scorn and fear to do any thing but what your conscience will pronounce consistent with, and conducing to—"Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and goodwill towards men." The very nature of your profession leads you to meditations on "a judgment to come." O that you would so realize and antedate. that judgment, as to do nothing but what you verily believe will be approved in it! If This piety must pleading of causes. in a dirty cause. you discover that your client has an unjust cause, you will faithfully advise him of it. The question is, "Whether it be lawful to use falsehood and deceit in contending with an adversary?" It is to be hoped that you have determined it like an honest man. desirous that truth and justice operate very particularly in the You will abhor, Sir, to appear You will be sincerely should take place. You will speak nothing which shall be to the prejuYou will detest the use of all un dice of either. case. fair arts to confound evidences, to brow-beat witnesses, or to suppress what may give light in the You have nothing to object to that old rule of pleading a cause: "When the guilt of the party is clearly proved, the counsel ought to withdraw his support." I remember that Schusterus, a famous lawyer and counsellor, who died at Heidelberg in the year 1672, has an admirable passage in his epitaph: "Morti proximus vocem emisit; Nihil se unquam suasisse consilio, "When at the point of death he could say, I never in the whole course of my practice gave an opinion of which I now repent." A lawyer who can leave the world with such language as this, is a greater blessing to the world than can be expressed. I cannot encourage any gentleman to spend much time in the study of the Canon law; which Baptista a Sancto Blasio has found to contradict the civil law in two hundred instances. The decrees, the decretals, the clementines, and extravagants, which compose the hideous volumes of that law, would compel any wise man to make such an apology for his aversion to it as one once made: "I cannot, Sir, feed on that which is vile." Agrippa, who was a doctor of that law, said of it, "It is neither of God nor for him: nothing but corruption invented it; nothing but avarice has practised it." Luther, began the Reformation with burning it. Nevertheless, there is one point much insisted on in the canon law, which well deserves your serious consideration; that is-RESTITUTION. When men have obtained riches not by right, or have heaped up wealth in any dishonest and criminal ways, a restitution will be a necessary and essential part of that repentance which alone will find acceptance with heaven. The solemnity of this thought may stand like an "angel with a drawn sword" in your way, when you may be under a temptation to go after the "wages of unrighteousness." Our law was once given to us in French. Many of you, gentlemen, know the modern French as well as the ancient. Mons. Placette has given you a valuable treatise of Restitution, in which there is a chapter," Of the cases in which counsellors are obliged to make restitution." In that chapter some persons will find a sad Bill of Costs taxed for them: and, among other very true assertions, this is one: "S'il exige une recompense excessive et disproportionee a ce qu'il fait, il est oblige a restituer ce qu'il prend de trop." In plain English: "Excessive fees must be disgorged by restitution." This should be thought upon. It is an old complaint, "that a good lawyer is seldom a good neighbour." You know how to confute it, gentlemen, by making your skill in the law a blessing to your neighbourhood. It was affirmed as long ago as in the time of Sallust, "Towns were happy formerly, when there were no lawyers; and they will be so again when the race is extinct;" but you may, gentlemen, if you please, be a vast accession to the happiness of your neighbourhood. You shall have some of my proposals for it, in a historical exhibition. In the life of Mr. John Cotton, the following passage is related concerning his father, who was a lawyer: "That worthy man was very remarkable in two most imitable practices. One was, that when any of his neighbours wishing to sue another, applied to him for advice, it was his custom, in the most persuasive and obliging manner, to attempt a reconciliation between both parties; preferring the consolation of being a peace-maker, to all the fees which he might have obtained by blowing up the differences. Another was, he was accustomed, every night, to examine himself, with reflections on the transactions of the past day; and if he found that he had neither done good to others, nor got good to his own soul, he was as much grieved as ever the famous Titus was, when he complained in the evening, "My friends! I have lost a day." What a noble thing would it be for you to find out oppressed widows and orphans; and as such can appear only "in forma pauperis ;" and are objects in whose oppression "might overcomes right," generously plead their cause! "Deliver the poor and needy, and rid them out of the hand of the wicked" -it will be a glorious and a God-like action! Wealthy persons, about to make their wills, frequently ask your advice. You may embrace the opportunity of advising them to such liberality in behalf of pious purposes, as may greatly advance the kingdom of God in the world. And, when you have opportunity, by law, to rescue "the things that are God's" from the sacrilegious hands of those men that would "rob God," it may be hoped that you |