will decline, and manners, customs, and morals will deteriorate; family life and home will become secondary; children more worldly-wise, worldly and selfish; childbearing avoided. The United States Census demonstrates that this last has not yet taken place, not even as to the families whose lineage runs back of 1790. It remains to be seen how far and how soon, if at all, the wonderful qualities of the American woman are to be modified by the new environment.

Men are apt to sacrifice governmental principles to personal aims. Women are more self-sacrificing, conscientious, and devoted. When they come to understand the Constitution and the American institutions it represents, as they will, they will be its most persistent and consistent supporters. And then there are the children. At a tender age they imbibe the principles and teaching of their mother. If they are reared to revere their country and uphold its austere institutions, the future is safe. In Rome this influence was not enough to stay the corruption of conquest, but there is no more beautiful picture than Cornelia and the Gracchi.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE LAWYERS

THE people themselves are the ones who must preserve republican institutions and meet new problems by new solutions. But they will need leaders, and here the legal profession is indispensable. It is a curious fact that although the lawyers are made the butt of jokes, yet the legal profession has always led the people and has always been trusted by the people. De Tocqueville in his celebrated work in "Democracy in America" explains this by saying: "The government of democracy is favorable to the political power of lawyers; for when the wealthy, the noble, and the prince, are excluded from the government, they [the lawyers] are sure to occupy the highest stations in their own right, as it were, since they are the only men of information and sagacity, beyond the sphere of the people, who can be the object of the popular choice. . . . The people in democratic states do not mistrust the members of the legal profession, because it is well known that they are interested in serving the popular cause; and it listens to them without irritation, because it does not attribute to them any sinister designs." 1

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The American government has been and essentially is a government by lawyers. Of the 29 Presidents 23 have been lawyers; of the 44 Secretaries of State 42 have been lawyers; all of the Attorneys General; all of the judges of the federal courts; of the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence 25 were lawyers; and of the 55 framers of the Federal Constitution 31 were lawyers. In the present Congress nearly two-thirds of the Senators are lawyers (62 out of 96) and over half of the Representatives (279 out of 435). In 1920 there were but 122,519 lawyers,

judges, and justices in this country of over one hundred and five millions of people. Never before in the history of the world has so great and intelligent a nation been governed by so small a body of men. The reason of all this, as expressed by Senator Hoar, is that "The lawyer is the chief defense, security, and preserver of free institutions and of public liberty.'

1

The Constitution of the United States depends for its meaning on the bench and bar. Henry Adams, writing in 1889, said that after the failure to impeach Justice Chase of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1805, "Henceforward the legal profession had its own way in expounding the principles and expanding the powers of the central government through the Judiciary."" That was over a hundred years ago and has been verified by our intervening history. For over a hundred and thirty years the Supreme Court of the United States has been applying the Constitution to new conditions and the baffling problems which have arisen. That court is the keystone of the arch; without it the structure would fall into ruins. It is the greatest court that ever existed; never before has a court been called upon to reconcile a division of sovereign powers; never before has a court had power to annul the statutes of forty-eight sovereign states and of a federal government.

As already stated, the bewildering maze and labyrinth of American constitutional law is something new in the world. It has supplanted the divine right of kings. It has arisen from the American dual sovereignty and is the guardian of that dual sovereignty. It has piloted the two ships of state, state and federal; otherwise they would have collided and sunk. It is at once a vindication of the American bar and a challenge to it to live up to its principles. It is no occasion for smugness. It is a call to combat. It is an alarm bell that any decadence in the legal profession imperils the public safety. It is a summons to the American Bar to put itself in order and keep itself in order. It demands character, learning, and business ethics — ethics to

temper the industrialism of the age. And the courts will do their part. They are the finished product of the bar, elevated to the bench to personify the law.

In the conflict of interests of different sections there looms always the danger of the nation falling apart, the same as threatened the latter days of the Roman republic. That republic was finally held together by the despotism of the Cæsars and the sacrifice of democratic institutions. Those institutions had broken down and were no longer capable of maintaining law and order. History will repeat itself. The American republic will fall apart or a new Cæsar will seize the power and rule by force unless the American Bar holds the republic together without sacrifice of its democratic principles. De Tocqueville saw this when he said, "I cannot believe that a republic could subsist at the present time, if the influence of lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people." 1

Storm and stress is the life of Washington, and in the conflicts of sections and the clashing of interests the bar will have to be the steadying, compromising, conservative power. This will be no easy matter when the country has a population of five hundred millions of people. Lord Macaulay in his celebrated pessimistic letter in 1857 said: "It is quite plain that your Government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the Government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy. Here will be, I fear, spoliation. The spoliation will increase the distress. The distress will produce fresh spoliation. There is nothing to stop you. Your Constitution is all sail and no

anchor." 2

Macaulay was a brilliant writer but not much of a statesman or seer, and his direful prediction has come true only with that most despotic of all governments - Russia. Moreover, Macaulay neglected to mention that a republic has dangers from the rich as well as the poor, as, for example, in the closing days of the

Roman republic when the rich by monopolizing the land to the exclusion of the poor and working that land by slaves, eliminated the independent yeomanry, thereby leading to the downfall of the republic. In America spoliation is not possible while the agricultural class controls, and wealth is not dangerous unless and until it changes, controls, or eliminates that class. Ignorant and arrogant wealth is more dangerous than intelligent wealth, because the former destroys character, while the latter tends to improve it.

It is true that there is danger always to a republic both from the very rich and the very poor. There the capacity of the American Bar will be tested and its character will determine the issue. If the bar is determined that law and order shall prevail and that the laws shall reflect enlightened public opinion, then the menace of local disturbances, class selfishness, and foreign propaganda will merely quicken the public conscience. But if the bar fails chaos will come.

The mission of America is, to demonstrate that a great people can govern itself. Our government always has been and will continue to be a government by the legal profession. Hence it is important to inquire: what is the character of that profession? De Tocqueville describes the legal profession as an intellectual aristocracy. Professor Wendell of Harvard confirms this and writes "It is hardly excessive to say that throughout the nineteenth century the American bar proved itself a true intellectual aristocracy. In free competition, it forced itself to the fore; it asserted and justified its recognized leadership."1 An aristocracy it is not. It has no titles, no privileges, and knows no law of descent. Its ranks are open to the humblest of mankind, I who has intellect and character. Intellectual it is. It is no profession for the stupid, the indolent, or the ignorant. In Emerson's forceful language, it is "a profession which never admits a fool." 2 Its successes are earned and its activities manysided. It leads into all other occupations; no other occupations