the depravity of customs threatens its downfall.
In stretching out a helping hand to the toiler he is ever a master; in
carrying out an equitable distribution of fortunes made, an adviser; in
proclaiming the respect due to the law, an example and an authority in
maintaining its prestige in the social community. His knowledge should
be an arsenal from which to arm the weak and a shield with which to
protect the powerful; his voice should be beseeching in its pleading for
pardon from society for those who by their crimes undermine its
foundations, but inexorable in its demand when in the name of society he
calls for punishment. To the poor who strive to defend the bread earned
for their children, he is a stay; to the rich who worry over productive
investment for their fortunes, a guide; and if, in the errors committed
by both sides and which ever tend to separate them, he should be equity;
then to put an end to the struggles into which they will irreparably be
drawn, he must ever be justice itself.

And you have been all this in your exemplary life of lawyer; this is
what has won for you the love of the poor, the confidence of the rich,
and the respect of the whole of society; which has placed you in the
fore rank of the distinguished men of the American bar, from which only
the pressing need of serving the greater political interests of your
country could draw you.

Your important labors as a statesman and jurisconsult do not call forth
our admiration any the less.

The jurisconsult of our days is not only he who in the Roman Forum _ex
solio tanquam ex tripode_ solved the conflicts which arose from the
applying of the law; because now the part taken by the people in
governmental affairs and the ever-increasing necessities of democratic
life have widened his sphere of influence, and he has become to society
what the lawyer has been to the individual and the family. The
jurisconsult is a mentor of nations; in the midst of our eagerness to
achieve greater prosperity and in our constant wrestle as citizens to
form part of the public administration, he it is who points out the path
of our social and political life, and has to dictate the laws which
should conform to our customs as well as those which should be necessary
to determine its evolution. He it is who, standing in the prow, with
gaze fixed on the distant horizon, steers the ship through the paths
which guide nations to the haven of greater prosperity.

And you be