Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/269

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242
The Green Bag.

more rigid and assume a wider scope than those which touch the incipient barristers. Moreover, the solicitor oftenest has the duty of advising clients on their affairs, their risks, and their intercourse with commercial and trades matters. The barrister also advises, but only through employment of the solici tor. The American custom of a client going directly to a counsellor for comfort or warn ings is therefore unknown to the English bar. It is not difficult to perceive that ad vice filtered through the solicitor is less sat isfactory than if listened to by word of mouth, and with attendant magnetism of personal address. The method is of course doubly expensive. The business done in litigation by solici tors is, however, of less extent and value than their office business. There are rich solici tors in London and in the large provincial cities, whose names seldom appear in cause lists. It is the custom for families, firms, and corporations to have permanent solici tors. "My family solicitor" is a common phrase. He keeps the Family Tree in his of fice, the family secrets in his brain and heart, with the family title and mortgage deeds in his boxes. There not being public records kept in England of deeds and mortgages, solicitors become the " Registers." Such a public record as the States possess has often been agitated for in Parliament; but family pride and the traditional English dislike of novelty and innovation have always prevented the success of the radical agitation. No one who is familiar with the appear ance, carriage, demeanor, and address of law yers in the United States, and who has also been an attendant upon English courts, can

fail to admit and recognize the superiority in those respects of the American advocate. The latter possesses an elasticity and general grace of movement, facial gesture, natural and earnest delivery, readiness and aptitude in questioning, cleverness in repartee, and unction of diction that are seldom met with at the English bar. The average American lawyer attains eloquence which is seldom reached by the English barrister. The latter is a martyr to decorum. He seems oppressed with a ceremonial sense. He cannot run his fingers caressingly through his hair, and at times he talks as if feeling the weight of his wig upon his brain. Occasionally his gown seems to have the effect of a strait-jacket. A sense of etiquette appears often to act as a species of bearing or curb rein to his move ments. . He is apt to show a realization that he is an actor " made up," and that the judge is like the prompter or stage-manager at the wing, and that the " twelve " form an audi ence to be pleased rather than to be convinced. He wrestles with his rhetoric, as if weighed down and fettered with his instructions, and to feel that he is a mere conduit or fountain rather than the source of a stream. All noted barristers and Q. C.'s seem in some particular to be sensible that they are actors bred in the same school; while in the United States scarcely two lawyers exhibit similar peculiarities. In fine, the schooling of the English bench and bar tends toward mono tony and artificiality, while the schooling of the American bar tends toward freedom and naturalness in thought and speech, and to a general behavior, that is fettered only by the innate dignity of a gentleman, and plainly impressed by a high sense of duty.