air of generosity; as if the barrister were performing a noble
self-sacrifice, were devoting himself in a quite heroic manner, by giving
himself, head and heart, voice and intelligence, to the first distressed
applicant for his aid. It is only by referring to the political nature of
the occasion on which it was delivered, that we can account for the
following splendid exaggeration of Lord Brougham's upon this subject:--

"An advocate, by the sacred duty which he owes his client, knows, in the
discharge of that office, but one person in the world, that client and
none other. To save that client by all expedient means--to protect that
client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among others to
himself--is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; and he must
not regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction, which
he may bring upon any other. Nay, separating even the duties of a patriot
from those of an advocate, and casting them, if need be, to the wind, he
must go on, reckless of the consequences, if his fate it should unhappily
be to involve his country in confusion for his client's protection."

This piece of eloquent absurdity was delivered on the trial of Queen
Caroline, and the speaker was playing the advocate at the time he
delivered it. But Lord Brougham would not surely speak or write in the
same strain upon other and more ordinary occasions--if, for instance, the
client, for whom the country was to be involved in confusion, was a
railway company![15]

Every man has something to be said for him in the way of defence or
palliation; we have no objection to every man having his advocate in
Westminster Hall; but we are persuaded that public opinion is far too
indulgent to this "glorious and noble" profession, when it permits its
members, speaking as from their own conviction, to sport with truth to any
extent that may be serviceable to their clients. A more temperate zeal,
which should not overstep what the interest of justice demands, would
indeed be less munificently rewarded; but, in every other respect, it
would be a clear gain both to the cause of public morality and the
administration of the laws.

But that which, perhaps, more frequently calls up a feeling of pain and
humiliation in the barrister, is that for which he is not at all
responsible; namely, the nature of those _legal_ weapons the employment of
which his client has a right to demand of him. The rules of _pleading_