SIR GEORGE GREY AND THE LAW . PRACTITIONERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8655, 26 August 1891, Page 3

SIR GEORGE GREY AND THE LAW . PRACTITIONERS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— the request of a brother barrister s and solicitor I have consented to address yon on the subject of the contemplated alteration of the laws with reference to the legal profession in New Zealand. That friend is desirous of my doing this because I am qualified to practise here, and have been called " to the English bar, and have been admitted to practice as an attorney and counsellor-at-law in California. United States of America, but am not at present engaged in the pursuit of my profession. < He therefore considers that while I am in possession of some esoteric knowledge regarding the legal calling in several lands, I am under no inducement to speak with a side glance at my own immediate interests, and that perhaps the piblic would be less inclined to discount my opinion than that of my brother lawyers who are subsisting by the fruits Of their professional exertions. Speaking from the point of view which my experience has induced me to assume, I may say that I consider that the efforts which Sir George Grey has been taking for many years to throw open the 'gates of the legal profession are most short-sighted, and so far from being beneficial to the perfect democratic state for which I and others long, have a tendency to put upon the back of the democracy a most dangerous class of masters. There are three classes of men who have in their safe keeping the welfare of the community. These are the scientists who discover, the doctors who heal, and the lawyers who express in laws the resultant of human knowledge and superintend their administration. In a perfect state of ' society these men, so far from having to " hustle" for a living, would be lifted above the reach of temptation, and be bred in such an empyrean of honourableness and dignity that the noblesse oblige sentiment would Ikj the sole and sufficient guarantee of their "straightness." They would constitute a. class, but not a caste, and would be the one true aristocracy which the world has ever seen,—an intellectual aristocracy recruited annually from the people, whose raison d' elre was the guardianship of the . mind, the health and the wealth of the community. ; They would be in a true sense >.V professions." i But the accursed money-gettin<* spirit— which the United States is the hotbed and the coming awful warning— sought to vulgarise these " professions," and instead of holding them aloft as a beacon to the-best elements of the democracy, has sought to drag them down to a dirty 'level. Because of yore the professions were beginning to attain so honourable a character that even the proud and selfish aristocracies of the world stooped to patronise them, the democracy jumped at. conclusion that if only every lad who snowed more than a modicum of brains could manage to obtain the " hall mark," he might make money and rub shoulders with the highest in the land. This is the shopkeeper's ambition all over, and shows how the present democracy is founded, not on socialism or th( desire of co-operating for the general good, but on the old barbarous notion of personal and family aggrandisement—on the idea thai society and general peace exist within certain limits, for the express purpose of certain I persons being able unrestricted to prey upoii [ their fellows. ....

Except for those who seek to grab all they can in their own life-time the United States in its general tendencies is a model to be accepted with great reservation. They have with the confidence of youth fancied they were going to solve every problem right away, and are now beginning to discover thai they are merely affording the corpus vile, on which all sorts of problems must be thresined out afresh with toil and suffering. . In the matters of law and physio,they have thrown open " the career to the talents" and a nice mess they have made of it. The fact that the United States have produced a jurist like Story no more indicates the stamp of the average legal practitioner there thanone swallow makes the beginning of an English summer. It would be strange, indeed, if in a country ot sixty-five millions where more than 120,000 nominal lawyers are practising in this generation, a Story should not have been evolved during the past century. Also that many thousands of honourable and learned men should not have graced the front ranks of both the bench and the bar. But i like the gentleman who boasted that he had £500 a year, and it subsequently turned out that it was only for one year, this does not indicate the proportion of things. The question is, What proportion of American lawyer? are honest and capable ? The capable lawyer is known by his success ; but the honest lawyer, how shall we' know him? He is reputed to be the noblest work of God. Some assert that there is just one honest lawyer living, and he is your husband, your brother, your relative, or your friend. For the nonce every man is honest and every woman chaste until they are proved to be the contrary. The extraordinary point, however, is, that lawyers of notorious dishonesty, profligacy, and aproved ignorance swarm in America, so as to be in some sense a blemish and a danger to the community, and the general tone of the profession is so low according to an English lawyer's notions, that only those who have been obliged to do the " Pacific slope" from these colonies, or the " Atlantic slope" from the mother country can stomach the prospect of identifying themselves with it. In every city yonder " shysters " abound. The " shyster" received his name from the lowest form of attorney at " the Tombs," the police court of New York. lie has got th« " hall-mark" of America, and he makes bold to claim Bacon, Coke, Holt, Hardwieke, Mansfield, Eldon, Stowell, Erskiue, Bentham, Storey, Cairns, and Jessel, as his predecessors and professional brothers. It is needless to say that the shyster is a needy, loafing, ignorant rascal, haunting liquor saloons and public places in the hope of nobbling a stray greenhorn, and giindiuß the axes of the political bosses who pull the wires at elections. He knows just enough law to be dangerous, and is so necessitous as to be an easy prey to every temptation ol which human nature, is susceptible. Honesty in such men is not to be expected. So largo, has the proportion of these lawyers become that the calling has ceased to be held in high esteem in America as a calling r If a lawyer can become distinguished or wealthy h3 obtains personal recognition; but the profession has long since ceased to be an earnest of respectability and high sense of duty. It has became a trade with the questionable tricks of trade—money is its God, and there iS in it no corporate sense of honour.

If the democracy of New Zealand insist upon reducing the professions to trades in the hope of getting cheap law and making their sons " somebodies," they will find in the end that they will only create a class of needy cormorants too numerous to be distinct, and too dishonest to be esteemed, while they will pay for it through the nose in the persons of those unfortunates who are fleeced that these harpies may live. They will also increase the number of political lawyers, which is not desirable, a few good jurists foe the purpose of codifying the laws and drafting Bills being all that is required in the Legislature. If, too, the profession is to be reduced to a trade, the democracy may as well be consistent. Even the man who goes to buy • a pound of sugar has some guarantee that the weights have been inspected by the Government official, and that the grocer is liable to prosecution for adulteration. The result of Sir George Grey's measures will be to givo many men a position of great trust without a corresponding security to the public against the abuse of that trust. Already there is too little. It is to be hoped that a drastic system of examination and a drastic system of purification will be adopted in this land rather than a general relaxation, and that the public good will not be sacrificed to this foolish outcry of la carriers ouverte aux talents."l am, etc., R. A. Milligan Hogg.