except Mr. Benjamin, who went abroad and catered to the English for reasons of his own, and won their good-will by his un-American notions. Plenty of such men come over to our country expecting to see herds of buffaloes and tribes of Indians on the farms next adjoining our large cities. No such views ever come from Coleridge or Russell or Gladstone. And it is to the lower class of opinions in England that the article in question certainly caters. This is seen by an attempt to make the very lowest kind of jus tice-practice of "whittling" judges and quarrelling lawyers represent the average bar; while they no more fairly represent the bar than slugger Sullivan represents Boston aristocracy, or Buffalo Bill repre sents the farmers of Michigan. Happily within the last quarter-century quite a large number of Ameri can attorneys have successfully contended with those over the water, and the net results are decidedly in our favor. As a slight reminder we might mention the little fifteen millions and over gained in the Geneva Award, and the high respect accorded to our Mr. Edmunds, who was called over the water to deliver an oral opinion to the House of Lords, which opinion was promptly adopted by that august body. Of the " character and acquirements of American lawyers" mentioned, it may also be said that things are best measured by results. This is true in sci ence; for when Edison produces a perfect light, or Bell makes a new telephone, or Morse an original telegraph, which the world admires in wonder, the question of fame is settled beyond dispute. The law yers of our country being and having been the leaders of Congress, the Senate, and the Government for the most brilliant century of growth and development ever known by any country, entitles them to some credit to aristocracy if they wanted it; but happily their fame rests not alone on titles or foreign opinions, but on the monument they have built in the national system of laws and government that stands to their honor forever. Of the men who built this splendid structure several hundred could be named that would rank with and outrank any lawyer that England ever bred or will ever produce. To call but a partial roll of those brilliant leaders of the past like Webster, Story, Choate, Marshall, Waite, Seward, Stanton, Lincoln, Chase, Howard, Adams, Tilden, O'Connor, Matthews, Conkling, Carlisle, McDonald, Butler, Doolittle, and their kind, is to name the peers of any English barrister who ever spoke or wrote on legal subjects. And to name the living leaders like Evarts, Edmunds, Field, Broadhead, Russell, Gray, Curtis, Parker, and Cooley, with plenty more unnamed, would swell the list till no American need dread an intellectual combat even now. And the magnitude is to us a trifle. This is not a little island, where one may step off, but a nation that would square up and make up into
a great many kingdoms like Great Britain. By the fruits of our country men may know it. As Webster once said of his grand old State : " There she stands! she needs no defenders; she speaks for herself!" So I say of our lawyers : their country is their mon ument. They were not all born great, — very mapy were born in humble life; but they have shown their greatness by their works. The natural selection and the all-around lawyer — good for more works than one — is another Ameri canism that we are proud of. We are not hedged about with wigs and gowns, nor dignified by titles, nor too dependent upon royalty for fleeces; and if I read aright, some of the vilest pages of ancient and modern legal history were Written of Scroggs and Jeffries, of Bacon, of the Dilke and Parnell cases, that fairly reek with iniquity, and will stand as a set-off to any small malpractice of the American courts, that are not all, of course, quite perfect, yet average remarkably well for such youngsters. The court scenes and motion days are held up as a target of wit, and the "Sirs" and '• Colonels" are used to play small parts in the article mentioned, of which our gentle foreigner saw so much behind his eyeglass on a single motion day, where straw hats so shocked his royal highness that he fairly gets behind himself in horror of the awful thing — you know! And lastly he whets his knife once more over the "political lawyers," the "money-makers," and wonders, after all, why American lawyers of to day occupy any social position at all. Poor fellow! how it hurts, how it wounds, that any standing is left for Americans in society! Taking his item as a whole, it is about as weak as soup from the photo graph of a chicken, and it is to be hoped his coun trymen know better. If they grin or laugh at his flippancy, they may live to learn how foolishly they have been misled by him. Why, the real fact is, that New York alone has a bar eminently superior to that of London; Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Cin cinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, St. Paul, Mil waukee, Kansas City, Denver, and San Francisco are splendidly equipped with learned, able, and ex perienced men, who can stand before kings by the diligence in their legal business; who can entertain princes, conduct suits, formulate governments, and who on all occasions where wit, learning, experience, or cultivated judgment .is needed, are the peers of the best the earth affords, — men who have attained their places, be it social, political, or legal, by work, by genius, and by that power of forecast that comes in the very struggle that royalty scorns. But royalty — trembling and shaky as it stands — has no such monument as the American lawyers have produced; for truly may we say, the lawyers are the leaders of our Western World. J. W. Donovan.
