p. 295The Professional Man

Here were men devoted to a supernatural end, even in the legal profession—men, consequently, like Sir Thomas More, ready to mount the scaffold rather than contradict it by denying the Spiritual Supremacy of the Pope, or assenting to any heresy which a tyrant or an absurd people might propose—men like Felix, the great magistrate, described by Sidonius Apollinaris,... “a man of constant friendship, and who exalted his rank by his humility”—men such as D’Aguesseau not only imagined, but knew, named, pointed out. What a broad spirit was his (he says; speaking of Langlois), what precision of thought, what justness—we might almost dare to say, what infallibility of reason! There was nothing to exceed the soundness of his mind, unless it was his heart. His house had become a happy asylum for learning, experience, wisdom, and truth; a kind of temple, where sometimes the most important affairs of religion used to be treated, and where the ministers of the altar were surprised to find in a man of the world, not only more light and knowledge, but even more zeal for the purity of discipline, more ardor for the glory of the Church, than in some who approached the nearest to the sanctuary.

DIGBY, Compitum, b. iv., ch. i.

We feel, in beginning this chapter, as if we were about to enter some holy place consecrated to Him to whom alone belongs the perfection of all Holiness, Truth, and Justice;—a place hallowed not only by the immemorial reverence of past ages, but by the immediate presence of the Godhead Himself. There are mighty interests of a threefold nature, of which God, the creator of man, the author of society, and the protector of social order and happiness, intrusts the administration to a chosen few, and in favor of their kind: the sacred interests of the soul and the spiritual life, the august interests of justice, law, and order, and the scarcely less important interests of bodily health and life to be preserved and promoted.

Of the priesthood and its duties we are precluded from treating by the very scope of our work; of the high and important professions of the Lawyer, and the Physician, we proceed to speak, reserving to the next chapter what relates to other public avocations.

I. The Lawyer

We need scarcely recall to Catholics the doctrine of all our schools of theology on the nature and origin of law in general. They teach that “law is the divine will made known to rational creatures, and imposing on them the obligation of doing certain things and avoiding others, under pain of punishment.” This same will of the Author of our being imposes on us in like manner the obligation of obeying the laws enacted by the human legislator, who borrows his authority from God, in whom resides the supreme right of compelling the wills of His creatures.

Hence the fundamental principle admitted in all moral theology, that just laws are binding on the conscience on account of their conformity to the divine eternal law. Nor will it be out of place to recall here the words pronounced in our own legislative halls by one whose memory must be ever dear to Americans,¹1Archbishop Hughes of New York. and while contending for the religious freedom guaranteed by our Constitution:

“You make laws in this hall of supreme temporal power; but then, can you make them binding on the consciences of men? Yes, with one condition. If men, before your laws are enacted, have, as a principle in their hearts, the belief that God sanctions authority—that there is a higher and holier Law-maker who gives sanction to your laws. Where will you place the security and sacredness of legislation, but in this principle of the necessity of an account where deception will be impossible?”

Hence, also, in the thought and language of Christian Europe the close alliance between religion and justice, between the priest and the lawyer, and the parallels continually drawn between their respective offices,—the one having to minister at the altar of the Living God and to sit in His place as the judge of consciences, while the other was said to minister in the sanctuary of justice.

“Our old and beautiful French language,”—says the Count de Montalembert,—“immortal and intelligent, true representative of the good sense of our fathers, knew by a wonderful instinct to assimilate religion to justice. It was always said ‘the temple of law,’ ‘the sanctuary of justice,’ ‘the priesthood of the magistracy.’ We ought to accept and respect this synonym, and to take it for our guide in legislation; preserving the dignity of what is most august in the secular government of the State, which is certainly the administration of justice; maintaining inviolable the temple of law and the temple of God, the sanctuary of justice and the sanctuary of truth, the sacerdotal character of the priest, and the priesthood of the judge.”²2Quoted by Digby.

It is a well-known matter of history, that the Church from the earliest ages not only penetrated with her spirit of freedom, enlightenment, and mercy the legislation of both the Eastern and Western Empires, but, at the downfall of the latter, established, encouraged, and supported throughout Christendom the great law-schools which have been the fountains of modern legal science. She watched with equal solicitude over the serious special studies necessary, respectively, to the lawyer and the theologian. The same may be said of her schools of medicine.

Solicitude of the Church for the Legal Profession

In her motherly anxiety for the reign of justice and equity as distinguished technically from law, she enacted, whenever she could, rigorous statutes against the abuses of law-courts and the chicanery of practitioners. Her constant endeavor,—it will be found, on studying carefully the annals of the Christian ages,—was to elevate the legal profession, to glorify it in the opinion of the people, and to inspire its members with a deep sense of religious self-respect and responsibility. The Emperor Justinian made a special edict, by which all advocates in the imperial courts of law were forced to swear on the Gospels, at the beginning of every trial, that they would not plead a cause they knew to be a bad one, and that they would withdraw from it the moment they discovered its injustice. The laws of Spain enjoined a like oath. In 1274, Philip III., the son of St. Louis, issued an ordinance to the same effect. But—what may prove of more interest to our readers—in 1237 the English bishops assembled in council at London decreed thus:

“We order that whoever desires to obtain the office of a lawyer, ought to present himself to the diocesan, and to take oath before him that in all causes in which he is employed he will exercise a faithful ministry, not delaying or destroying the action of justice toward the opposite party, but in defending his client by the laws and solid reasons.”³3Matthieu Paris, ad annum 1237,—quoted by Digby.

“We see proof,” says Digby, “of the prodigious action of Catholicity in rendering strict, virtuous, and holy the character of the advocate. When secular honors were attached to the profession in France, the knight of laws was required to swear that he would never use his insignia in profane occupations, but in maintaining the rights of the Church and the Christian faith, and in the service of learning. The French lawyer, on being inscribed on the roll of advocates, engaged never to undertake just and unjust causes alike, without distinction, nor to maintain any with tricks, fallacies, and misquotations; he was not to set too high a price upon his services; he was not to lead a dissipated life, or one contrary to the modesty and gravity of his calling. He was not, under pain of being disbarred, to refuse his services to the indigent and oppressed. In the Mirroir des Justices, written in the reign of Edward II., it is laid down that a pleader or lawyer must be a person ‘receivable in judgment, no heretic, nor excommunicate man. He is to be charged by oath that he will not maintain nor defend what is wrong or false to his knowledge; he is to put in before the court no delays nor false evidence, nor move nor offer any corruptions, deceits, nor consent to any such.’”⁴4“Compitum,” b. iv., ch. i. This much will suffice to show the aim of the Great Mother of nations both in so guarding against abuses the profession of the law, that its administration should ever result in upholding right and righting wrong, and in directing the ministers of justice with such jealous care, that no stain could fall on their ermine.

The present Need of a thorough Legal Training

At an epoch when there is a general tendency toward lowering the traditional sacredness of the administration of justice, and of substituting a hasty and superficial legal education for the long and thorough preparation required in the days of our fathers,—it may not be inopportune to say a few words of encouragement to such as refuse to follow the short and easy path to the place and profits of the jurisconsult, the magistrate, or the pleader. With the same earnestness with which we should urge thoroughness in the education of the priest, we now plead for it in the training of the lawyer. And just as we are thrilled with gratitude and delight when we hear of our venerable ecclesiastical superiors’ conscientious efforts to raise higher and still higher the standard of excellence in their preparatory seminaries and schools of theology, even so do we bless God when we learn of the establishment and success of Law Schools where professors and pupils vie with each other in conscientious zeal to make of the noble science they aim at mastering, a something divine to be worshiped and honored by life-long devotion.⁵5We know the distinguished and devoted men who have given such fame to the Law-School of Laval University, Quebec, and have seen several of the eminent lawyers who have honored their masters by their incorruptible integrity more even than by their legal knowledge and forensic eloquence. We pray that in the Montreal Law-School, the same excellence may ever reign, and the same success attend the graduates! The noble rivalry which should exist between the parent university and its offshoot, should only produce a higher common ideal and a more triumphant result,—just as the commingling of the mighty waters of the Ottawa with those of the St. Lawrence forms a deeper, wider, and nobler stream, enriching, adorning, and glorifying a land so full of the noblest promise for all future time. Just as we write,—to our unspeakable satisfaction,—come the tidings that Georgetown College is about to crown all its past priceless services to our Catholic youth by perfecting its Law-School and Medical School, and taking measures to secure to our country the advantages of a great university complete in its every department. So the Society of Jesus in the United States, the illustrious Society of Saint Sulpice in Montreal, and that noble band of devoted priests, revered throughout Canada as the “Seminary of Quebec,”—join hands and hearts to endow the youth of America with schools worthy of the brightest ages of Christian civilization. Who can doubt of God’s blessing on them? “Walk in joy... Made free by love; a mighty brotherhood Linked by a jealous interchange of good, A glorious pageant more magnificent than conqueror’s return.”

The Lawyer’s Ideal

It cannot be too lofty. The science which is necessary, both to the advocate and the judge,—to say nothing of the legislator,—is not only exalted in its nature, but vast in its extent, and as exact in its every detail as its matters are most perplexing in their multitude and variety. Much more even than priestly science,—comprising the reasoned knowledge of dogmatic and moral theology, of canon law, conciliary jurisprudence, and ecclesiastical history, of the Sacred Scriptures and the languages which serve as a key to their study;—the science of jurisprudence not only borrows much from theology and its cognate branches, but it ranges over the entire framework of society, the relation of man toward man in the city, and the nation,—and those of each nation toward the entire human race. There is no science comparable to that of the accomplished lawyer—the jurist—in the vast and complex range of its subject-matter; none superior to it, save theology alone, in the sacredness and vital importance of the interests with which it deals in practice.

We cannot, then, be surprised that the Catholic Church which had received from the expiring Roman civilization the inheritance of its grand system of legislation and jurisprudence, should have cherished this heirloom with a religious care, and deemed the knowledge of law and the administration of justice second only in dignity and importance to the guardianship of the divine Deposit of Revelation and the sacred functions of the Christian priesthood.

In France, where all that pertained to the study of law and the administration of justice was ever held in singular honor,—the “worship of Justice,” its “temples,” and its “priesthood,” were not empty words: the popular language expressed notions, convictions, and sentiments deeply rooted in the souls of the people. Not even the wholesale ruin wrought in all the ancient institutions of Christian France,—and in the constitution of her law-courts, parliaments, and magistracy, more than in any other,—has been able to obliterate from the minds of her people the idea that Justice is a something divine, and that her ministers are specially consecrated and separated by their character and functions from the lay multitude. Besides, the sacredness of their functions and the eminence of the dignity they held in the estimation of all classes, caused the members of the judiciary to be accounted noble: hence the distinction of noblesse d’épée (nobility or aristocracy of the sword) and noblesse de robe (nobility of the judicial robes or ermine).

We must not pursue this analogy beyond the limits of France and into the constitutions and customs of other countries. Even to the present day England rejoices in raising to the peerage the most eminent among her judges; and of those who have honored the high office once graced by the martyred Sir Thomas More, several within the century had been born in the lowliest station. It is old Catholic tradition holding on its steady course in spite of religious and political changes,—like the White Nile above Fachoda, disappearing, to the eye of the careless observer, beneath a dense and impenetrable growth of papyrus and other aquatic plants, but pursuing still its way to the ocean.⁶6See Schweinfurth, “The Heart of Africa,” i., chap. iii.; and Sir Samuel W. Baker, “Ismailia,” chap. iii. 54 (New York ed.). The Church herself more than once manifested the high esteem in which she held lawyers, one of them, Guy Fouquet, being elected to the chair of St. Peter, in 1265, under the name of Clement IV.

For the instruction of lawyers themselves this much may be deemed more than sufficient on the high dignity of their profession. Less we could not say for the interest of the general reader. What shall we say of the mighty issues that depend on their professional skill, their uprightness, and conscientious devotion to their clients?

Interests Intrusted to Lawyers

Lawyers are intrusted with the fortunes and the honor of families, as well as with the liberty and life of individuals. On the professional virtues of no one class in the community does so much of its temporal happiness depend as on the men who undertake to defend and vindicate right against wrong before the august tribunals of justice. On no class does it depend so largely, so exclusively even, to bring justice, law, authority into contempt, or to make these venerable names still more sacred in the esteem of all classes.

The profound respect which the writer has ever entertained both for the bench and the bar, induces him to hold up here to the entire legal body,—to such at least as share his own religious faith,—the mirror of one noble life, that of a man whose memory is still fondly cherished in his native country, and who deserved to be the parent of one of Spain’s most saintly and accomplished daughters.⁷7The venerable Marina de Escobar.

Diego de Escobar was an advocate in the royal court of chancery at Valladolid, and professor of civil and canon law in the University of Salamanca. His extreme delicacy of conscience, however, caused him to give up practicing in the law-courts after a brief career of extraordinary brilliancy. Thenceforward he devoted himself to the duties of his professorship, charming and edifying the numerous youth of the university by his gentleness, his childlike simplicity, and spotless purity of life much more even than by his uncommon learning and eloquence. In the Latin biography of his daughter is contained a brief ‘Rule of Life’ which this exemplary Christian had drawn up for himself, and which is here submitted to the reader.

“My first care shall be, when I rise in the morning, to say my prayers and invoke the Blessed Virgin, then go to hear Mass, and, on festivals, to the Sermon, which I shall listen to attentively and devoutly, beseeching our Lord to give me grace to serve Him. I am resolved, wherever I may be, not to assent to or countenance murmuring, to prevent and reprove swearing, to give good advice, to pardon offenses, and, above all to suffer and bear with unruffled soul insults, afflictions, and ill fortune; also daily to visit some sick person, consoling and assisting him to the best of my power; also to visit those in affliction, in order to comfort them; to follow the dead to their last resting-place; to give alms cheerfully to every one who asks from me; to entertain hospitably the homeless poor whom I may meet on the roads or public places, and to give them food and drink and clothing, considering that in their persons I receive into my house Christ, who is present in the poor—to take care that no one leaves me sad and desolate, but rather joyful and refreshed; to wear sackcloth or a rope next my flesh, to take the discipline once a week, to fast not only on the prescribed days, but also on the vigil of every feast of the Blessed Virgin, and, if I can, on the Fridays; to endeavor as far as I can to hinder litigation, and to apply myself diligently to this purpose; not to act tyrannically with persons going to law, but to speak to them courteously and in a friendly manner; to dictate lectures to my pupils for their especial benefit; in fine to meditate on the life and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ; to be grateful to God for the benefits I receive from Him, and to love Him for His goodness.”⁸8Vita Venerabilis Virginis Marina de Escobar, lib. i., c. 1.

Do not say that the mirror of such a life reflects an ideal too superhuman, too far above the low level of what modern society esteems as excellent and exemplary. You, men of the world, are still Christian men, men who believe in supernatural virtue and supernatural grace as a help toward such virtue; you believe also in the necessity for all who would have a share with Christ to be Christlike, and, therefore, supernatural. Would you forgive a priestly teacher, writing on such deeply practical matters, to address you as men who only believed in naturalism,—the worship of mere natural excellence, to the exclusion of all the divine forms of goodness and greatness so familiar to our fathers?

Why the Lawyer’s Ideal must be Supernatural

No! In the consciousness of our own innate weakness amid the general abasement of morals and manners around us, we must not drift unresistingly downward with the current, but lift our eyes and hands and hearts upward to the eternal hills where is our Hope and Helper,—as well as our Model. The vision of One thorn-crowned and treading the steep road of Calvary beneath His heavy cross, is never to be lost sight of. We are His disciples and followers. Hence it is that in all Catholic countries,—all throughout Christendom, indeed, before the middle of the sixteenth century,—the image of Christ crucified was hung up on the wall full in view of the judges’ bench,—as if He it was who presided at the administration of justice, as if lawyers and judges felt bound to be guided in the practice of their noble profession by His spirit and His maxims,—tempering all human justice and law with His Mercy and Charity.

We remember, in visiting the Palais de Justice at Paris, to have seen, in the magnificent hall called Salle des Pas Perdus a large crucifix suspended from the wall. Palace, hall, and crucifix have since been swept away by the drunken fanatics of the Commune,—the worthy representatives of our modern naturalists and levelers.

Our lawyers and our judges, however, will only be all the more worthy of the name they bear, all the more honored and blessed of those who need impartial human justice,—if they bear with them, impressed on their hearts and their lives the likeness of Christ crucified. They must follow Him! And we should fail in our assumed duty did we not tell them so.

We have been privileged to know and to live with some of the best, the saintliest, the most lovable, and the most accomplished of Christian men; but none of the dear and venerable forms so familiar to us in youth and mature life ever effaced the sweet images of these two ornaments of the Bar and Bench of Lower Canada, Justices Panet and Morin, to each of whom every word written for his own guidance by Diego de Escobar might be literally applied.

Of this Royal Way of the Cross, followed by all such true men, we can say with one who was in his day the wonder of the Roman world, the master and guide of great lawyers and illustrious orators: “This is the religion which possesses the universal way for delivering the soul; for, except by this way, none can be delivered. This is a kind of royal way, which alone leads to a kingdom which does not totter like all temporal dignities, but stands firm on eternal foundations.”¹⁰10St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, l. x., c. 32: Haec est religio quæ universalem continet viam animæ liberandæ; quoniam nulla nisi hac liberari potest. Hæc est enim quodammodo Regalis Via, quæ una ducit ad regnum, non temporali fastigio nutabundum, sed æternitatis firmitate securum.

This Royal Road is the Highway of Honor

One word to all members of the Bar on this right-royal highway of Christian honor, and on the dishonorable and degrading tendencies from which it is the deep interest of all that the profession of the law should be “delivered” and preserved. St. Louis, King of France, was, among other mighty cares, so anxious that no suspicion of wrong-doing should attach itself to the administration of justice within his kingdom, that he built what is known as La Sainte Chapelle (“The Holy Chapel”), by the side of the central court of justice in Paris, placing within this most exquisite of all existing church edifices the Crown of Thorns worn by our Lord, and which the holy king had brought with him from Palestine. There, daily, judges and advocates were wont to assist devoutly at the Holy Sacrifice, before proceeding to their usual avocations,—the presence of the diadem of shame worn by the King of Kings in His passion, and the celebration of the most august of their religion’s mysteries serving as an eloquent exhortation to the conscientious discharge of their august office.

In this same sanctuary all the members of the Bar formed a pious brotherhood, bound together, not by the common purpose of promoting their own worldly or pecuniary interests, or of protecting prevarication or wrong-doing or incompetence, against those above or below themselves, but by the sincere and firm design of saving their professional robes from even the slightest stain of dishonesty, of guarding their clients from the possibility of wrong, and of furthering to the best of their power the interests of their dependents and the cause of impartial justice. Their model was a Frenchman, Sulpicius Severus (died 410), held as a saint in some parts of France, and who was equally studious of the interests of justice and of the science of law, and as zealous in putting a stop to lawsuits as he was to urge forward those he had undertaken.¹¹11Neque enim ille magis juris consultus quam justitiæ fuit; neque instituere litium actiones malebat, quam controversias tollere; applied by Cicero to a contemporary of the same name as the Christian advocate. It was, however, then, as it has been ever since, a hard struggle for high-souled lawyers against the custom which prevailed among their false brethren; and France has had her canonized Advocate, Ivo de Kaermartin, of whom is sung on his feast-day:

Ancient and Modern “Picklocks”

The opposite character, the unprincipled or half-educated pettifogger,—the man of greed and gold,—is no new character in the world. The portrait made of him in the days of Queen Elizabeth is that of many a man in the days of Queen Victoria, and those who might sit for it abound on both sides of the Atlantic:

Of course, the men whose ignorance, incapacity, and bad actions dishonor a noble profession, should never be cited or accepted by any enlightened or impartial person as the fair representatives of that profession. It is both illogical and unjust to argue from the exceptional guilty few to the innocent and upright many. The majority, however, in any profession would seem, in the judgment of the public, to become responsible for the conduct of a dishonest minority, when they neither protest in a body against open and crying wrong, or when they neglect to stop the abuse by stringent enactments and exemplary punishment.

There are two classes of persons toward whom members of the Bar may display the disinterestedness and devotion worthy of their calling, or that spirit of peculation which is now the bane of so many courts of law: the poor and the upper classes. So far as the poor are concerned, it may suffice to hold up to all the mirror of the Christian generosity and charity practiced by lawyers in some Catholic lands.

We have spoken of St. Ivo, as the acknowledged patron of the legal profession. Perhaps the reader may wish to know on what grounds this Saint merited such a distinction. Ivo Hélori de Kaermartin, was born of an illustrious family near Tréguier in Lower Brittany in the year 1253. He was thus a contemporary of St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, and Petrarch, living in an age of great intellectual activity and culture,—when the study of law was held in extraordinary honor. He completed his philosophical and theological course in the University of Paris, and his course of canon and civil law at Orleans,—the former under the celebrated canonist William de Blaye, who afterward became bishop of Angoulême, and the latter under Peter de la Chapelle, an eminent lawyer, who became bishop of Toulouse and a cardinal. This elevation is one fact among thousands to show in what esteem superiority in legal lore was held by the Church in that age.

Home Education of the Christian Lawyer

Ivo was blessed in having a mother whose accomplishments and piety enabled her to mold her boy’s soul to the pursuit of the noblest aims and the practice of the most generous virtue. She labored early and successfully in impressing him with the conviction that he must become a supernatural man and a saint. This high purpose gave a direction to all his youthful studies and to his career in ripe manhood. At Paris and Orleans he shone among the numerous youth of each university with the twofold splendor of his uncommon talent and unearthly purity of life. Not that men of saintly lives were then rare in the great schools of France, Germany, and Italy,—for history attests the contrary; but, as these belonged for the most part to the great religious orders of St. Dominick and St. Francis, then in the early summer of their glorious prosperity, the union in a young layman and a law student of the highest gifts of intellect and the most exalted piety was a thing even then deserving of admiration.

Both in Paris and in Orleans the noble youth was remarkable for his rigorous abstemiousness, never tasting wine or anything intoxicating, abstaining even from the use of flesh meat, strictly observant of the fasts of the Church, and giving to sleep the shortest space he could. But he gave most of his spare time to visiting the poor and sick in the hospitals, where his presence was ever like a sunbeam.

The Advocate of the Poor

He had made a secret vow of perpetual virginity; and this, while disposing him to enter the service of the Church at a later date, made him refuse the most tempting offers of marriage. Indeed, the birth, the surpassing talent and eloquence of the young lawyer, as well as his growing reputation, opened to him the doors of the best families and the avenue to the highest dignities in the State. He was, however, wholly devoted to his profession, devoted especially to the poor and defenseless. These soon found out their friend and protector; and even during this first period of his career, Ivo was known as “the Advocate of the Poor,”—a most glorious distinction.

The appellation became more especially his, when at length he was induced to receive holy orders. As, in every diocese in France,—and indeed of all Western Christendom,—the bishop’s court was the one to which the laboring poor loved to appeal for justice, Ivo was, immediately after his ordination, appointed “official,” or presiding officer at the ecclesiastical court of Rennes. Here he was not permitted to remain long; for the Bishop of Tréguier, who claimed him as his diocesan, forced him to accept the position of ecclesiastical judge in his own native city. He made of his court a model, reformed the entire administration of justice, and became the idol of the people far and near. For, not satisfied with fulfilling his own duties as judge, he held himself ever in readiness to go to other courts to plead the cause of the needy and the oppressed.

Revered as he was by high and low, this readiness to advocate the rights of the widow and the orphan, of the husbandman and the day-laborer, seemed to create neither jealousy nor unworthy rivalry among his brother lawyers. On the contrary, his deep knowledge not only of law but of human nature, his almost preternatural sagacity in detecting guilt and following it through all its dark windings, and the eloquence which he displayed in favor of the innocent,—made him a welcome favorite everywhere.

When his bishop forced him to accept a pastoral charge, he displayed in his parish of Tresdretz the apostolic virtues of which he had already given the promise while a layman. He was a true father and protector to his people, to the poor in particular. He built near his own residence an hospital and asylum for the sick and the poor, in which he lavished daily on them all the care of the most tender charity. He died at the age of fifty in 1303, mourned by all Brittany, and, indeed, by all France, so universally was he beloved and revered. John de Montfort, Duke of Brittany, went himself to Rome to solicit his canonization, solemnly affirming on oath that he had been cured by the prayers of the man of God of a sickness pronounced by the best physicians to be incurable. The examination into the heroicity of his life and virtues was begun in 1337, and completed ten years afterward, when the name of Ivo was placed on the list of God’s most glorious servants, and the 19th of May, the day of his death, was appointed as his feast, thenceforward to be the great feast-day of Christian lawyers.

Even in England the great Breton “Advocate of the Poor” was revered by the people as well as by the members of the profession he had so highly honored; his name was given to churches and to institutions, and still survives in more than one place.

We are only solicitous in thus glancing at so holy a life, that every true-hearted lawyer should be,—the advocate, the defender, the devoted and disinterested counselor of the poor.