ctice of the bar, these men had
considered reason as the instrument of dispute; they interpreted
the laws according to the dictates of private interest and the same
pernicious habits might still adhere to their characters in the public
administration of the state. The honor of a liberal profession has
indeed been vindicated by ancient and modern advocates, who have filled
the most important stations, with pure integrity and consummate wisdom:
but in the decline of Roman jurisprudence, the ordinary promotion of
lawyers was pregnant with mischief and disgrace. The noble art, which
had once been preserved as the sacred inheritance of the patricians,
was fallen into the hands of freedmen and plebeians, who, with cunning
rather than with skill, exercised a sordid and pernicious trade. Some
of them procured admittance into families for the purpose of fomenting
differences, of encouraging suits, and of preparing a harvest of gain
for themselves or their brethren. Others, recluse in their chambers,
maintained the dignity of legal professors, by furnishing a rich client
with subtleties to confound the plainest truths, and with arguments to
color the most unjustifiable pretensions. The splendid and popular class
was composed of the advocates, who filled the Forum with the sound of
their turgid and loquacious rhetoric. Careless of fame and of justice,
they are described, for the most part, as ignorant and rapacious guides,
who conducted their clients through a maze of expense, of delay, and of
disappointment; from whence, after a tedious series of years, they
were at length dismissed, when their patience and fortune were almost
exhausted.

III. In the system of policy introduced by Augustus, the governors,
those at least of the Imperial provinces, were invested with the
full powers of the sovereign himself. Ministers of peace and war, the
distribution of rewards and punishments depended on them alone, and
they successively appeared on their tribunal in the robes of civil
magistracy, and in complete armor at the head of the Roman legions. The
influence of the revenue, the authority of law, and the command of a
military force, concurred to render their power supreme and absolute;
and whenever they were tempted to violate their allegiance, the loyal
province which they involved in their rebellion was scarcely sensible
of any change in its political state. From the time of Commodus to the
reign of Constantine, near one hundred governo