733 



ATTORNEY. 



ATTRACTION. 



731 



to sue by a peculiar process, called an attachment of privilege, and 

 to be sued in his own court by bill ; but the Act for uniformity 

 of process, 2 Will. IV. c. 39, abolished these distinctions, and an 

 attorney now sues and is sued like other persons. By reason of the 

 supposed necessity for his presence in court, an attorney is exempt 

 from offices requiring personal service, as those of sheriff, constable, 

 overseer of the poor, and also from serving as a juror. These privileges 

 being allowed not so much for the benefit of attorneys as of their 

 clients, are confined to attorneys who practise, or at least have prac- 

 tised within a year. 



An attorney is also subject to some disabilities and restrictions. 

 By rule of Michaelmas Term, 1854, no attorney can be bail for a 

 defendant in any action. By 5 Geo. II. c. 18, s. 2, no attorney can be 

 a justice of the peace for a county while in practice as an attorney ; 

 and no practising attorney can be a commissioner of the land tax 

 without possessing 1001. per annum. No attorney who is a prisoner 

 ia any prison, or within the rules or liberties thereof, can sue out any 

 process, or commence or prosecute or defend any action or suit ; and 

 if he so commence, prosecute, or defend any action or suit, he will be 

 punishable as for a contempt of court and be incapable of recovering 

 his fees. 



3. The consequences of an attornetfi mubehaviour. The court which 

 has admitted an attorney to practise treats him as one of its officers, 

 and exercises a summary jurisdiction over him, either for the benefit 

 of his clients, or for his own punishment in case of misconduct. If 

 he is charged on affidavit with fraud or malpractice, contrary to justice 

 and common honesty, the court will call upon him to answer the 

 matters of the affidavit ; and if he do not distinctly deny the charges 

 imputed to him, or if he swear to an incredible story in disproof of 

 them, the court will grant an attachment. If the misconduct of the 

 attorney amount to an indictable offence, the courts will in general 

 leave him to be indicted by the party complaining, and will not call 

 upon him to answer the matters of an affidavit. If the attorney has 

 been fraudulently admitted, or has been convicted of felony or any 

 other offence which renders him unfit to practise, or if he has 

 knowingly suffered his name to be used by a person unqualified to 

 practise, or if he has himself acted as agent for such a person, or if he 

 has signed a fictitious name to a demurrer purporting to be the 

 signature of a barrister, or otherwise grossly misbehaved himself, the 

 court will order him to be struck off the roll of attorneys. But 

 striking off the roll is not a perpetual disability ; for in some instances 

 the court will permit him to be restored, considering the punishment 

 in the light of a suspension only. 



4. The atturneifi remedy fur recovering hi fees. An attorney may 

 recover his fees from his client in an action of debt or indebitatua 

 atsumpsit, which he may maintain for business done in other courts as 

 well as in that of which he is admitted an attorney. But an attorney 

 cannot recover for conducting a suit in which, owing to gross negligence 

 or other cause, the ch'ent has had no benefit whatever from the attorney's 

 superintendence. By the 6 & 7 Viet. c. 73, s. 37, no attorney shall 

 sue for the recovery of his fees or disbursements till the expiration of 

 one calendar month after he has delivered, or sent by post, to his 

 client a bill of such fees or disbursements, and subscribed with his 

 own hand, or accompanied by a letter so subscribed ; and on appli- 

 cation of the party chargeable by such bill, the court, or a judge of 

 the court in which the business is done, may refer the bill to be taxed 

 by the proper officer ; and if the attorney, or the party chargeable, 

 shall refuse to attend such taxation, the officer may tax the bill 

 ex parte, pending which reference and taxation no action shall be 

 commenced for the demand ; and on the taxation and settlement of 

 the bill, the party shall pay to the attorney, or as the court shall 

 direct, the whole sum due on the bill, or be liable to attachment or 

 process of contempt ; and if it is found that the attorney has been 

 overpaid, then he shall forthwith refund. The statute applies not 

 only to fees and disbursements for business done in a court of law or 

 equity, but to conveyancing or other business not transacted in any 

 court of law or equity. 



The solicitor is by the statute also enabled to obtain the taxation 

 of his own bill without the expense and delay of an action. The 

 certificate of the taxing-master is final ; and it is provided that a bill 

 shall not be taxed after a verdict or writ of inquiry, or after twelve 

 months from the delivery of the bill, except under special circum- 

 stances, and under no circumstances after twelve months' payment. 



To assist an attorney in recovering his costs, he has a lien for the 

 amount of his bill upon the deeds and papers of his client which have 

 come to his hands in the course of his professional employment ; and 

 till his bill be paid, the court will not order them to be delivered up, 

 nor can an action be maintained for them. The attorney has also the 

 game lien on any money recovered by his client which comes to his 

 hands in the character of his attorney. As a further security to the 

 attorney, his client is not permitted to discharge him and substitute 

 another without obtaining the leave of the court or a judge's order 

 for that purpose, which is never granted except upon the terms oi 

 paying the first attorney's bill. (See Bac. Abridgment, tit. Attorney , 

 7th ed.; Archbold's Practice, by Cluii.i/.) 



ATTORNEY, LETTER OK POWER OF. [LETTEB, on POWER OP 

 ArronxKT.J 



ATTORNEY-GENERAL. The attorney-general is a ministeria: 



officer of the crown, specially appointed by letters-patent. He is, in 

 jrinciple, nothing more than the attorney for the sovereign, and 

 occupies precisely the same relation that every other attorney does to 

 iis employer. The addition of the term ' general ' to the name of the 

 office probably took place in order to distinguish him from attorneys 

 appointed to act for the crown in particular courts, such as the 

 attorney for the Court of Wards, or the master of the Crown Office, 

 whose official name is ' coroner and attorney for the queen ' in the 

 2ourt of Queen's Bench. By degrees the office, which has usually 

 aeen filled by persons of the highest eminence in the profession of the 

 .aw, has become one of great dignity and importance. The duties of 

 ;he attorney-general are to exhibit informations and conduct prose- 

 cutions for such heinous misdemeanours as tend to disturb or 

 mdanger the state ; to advise the heads of the various departments of 

 government on legal questions ; to conduct all suits and prosecutions 

 relating to the collection of the public revenue of the crown ; to file 

 informations in the Exchequer, in order to obtain satisfaction for any 

 personal wrong committed in the lands or other possessions of the 

 crown ; to institute and conduct suite for the protection of charitable 

 endowments, in which the sovereign, as parens patriie, is entitled to 

 interfere ; and generally to appear in all legal proceedings, and in all 

 courts, where the interests of the crown are in question. 



The precise rank and precedence of the attorney-general have 

 frequently been the subject of discussion and dispute; the early 

 history and origin of this office, upon which the question in a great 

 measure depends, being matter of great obscurity. There is no doubt 

 that at all times the king must have had an attorney to represent 

 the crown in the several courts of justice ; but in early times he was 

 probably not an officer of such high rank as the attorney -general of the 

 present day. There are no traces of such an officer till some centuries 

 after the conquest ; and it is clear that, until a comparatively late 

 period, the king's Serjeant was the chief executive officer for pleas of 

 the crown. (Spelman, ' Gloss.' tit. ' Serviens ad legern.') In the old 

 form of proclamation upon the arraignment of a criminal, the king's 

 Serjeant was, till very lately, always named before the attorney-general; 

 and previously to the Commonwealth he invariably spoke before him 

 in all criminal prosecutions, and performed the duty of ' opening the 

 pleadings,' which since the Commonwealth has always been done by 

 the junior counsel. In the reign of James I. a curious altercation 

 between Sir Francis Bacon, who was then attorney-general, aud a 

 serjeant-at-law, upon this subject, is related in Bulstrode's ' Reports," 

 vol. iii. p. 32, upon which occasion Lord Coke, who was then chief 

 justice, said that "no Serjeant ought to move before the king's 

 attorney, when he moves for the king ; but for other motions any 

 serjeant-at-law is to move before him." He added, that when " he 

 was the king's attorney, he never offered to move before a Serjeant, 

 unless it was for the king." 



All questions respecting the precedency of the attorney-general and 

 the Serjeants were terminated in 1811 by a special warrant of his late 

 majesty, George IV., when Prince Regent, by which it was arranged 

 that the attorney-general and the solicitor-general should have place 

 and audience at the head of the English bar. 



A discussion arose in 1834, at the hearing of a Scotch appeal in the 

 House of Lords, upon the question of precedency between the attorney- 

 general and the lord advocate of Scotland, which was finally decided in 

 favour of the former. 



There is an attorney-general for each of the Duchies of Lancaster 

 and Cornwall, and for the County Palatine of Durham. 



ATTORNMENT is defined by Lord Coke to be ' an agreement of 

 the tenant to a grant of a seigniory, rent, or manor, or of the donee or 

 lessee to a grant of the reversion or remainder.' For originally, as the 

 tenant could not alien without consent of the lord, so the lord could 

 not alien without consent of the tenant. An attornment, as this con- 

 sent was called, was, therefore, necessary in all conveyances of a manor, 

 services, remainder or reversion which operated by the common law : 

 for in such case, if there was no attornment, the grant was void. But 

 by the statute 27 Hen. VIII. c. 10, an attornment was not necessary 

 where the estate passed by way of use : and now, by the statute 4 & 6 

 Anne, c. 16, SB. 9, 10, and 11 Geo. II. c. 19, s. 11, both the necessity 

 and efficacy of attornments, as regards the lord's estate, have been 

 almost entirely taken away. It is a forfeiture for a tenant for years to 

 attorn or pay rent to a stranger. (Comyn, Digest ; Co. Litt. 309, a ; 

 Blackst. Comm., Mr. Kerr's ed. vol. ii. 71, 269.) 



ATTRACTION (from two Latin words ad and traho, signifying to 

 draw towards), a term the meaning of which has been obscured by the 

 verbal disputes of a century and a half. It denotes, generally, the 

 power or principle by which all bodies mutually tend towards each 

 other, without regard to the cause or kind of action, which may be 

 the means of producing this effect. We shall here confine ourselves 

 to the general action of attraction, and for particular cases, refer to 

 articles ELECTRICAL ATTRACTION, CAPILLARITY, OSMOSE, &c. 



Anaxagoras, B.C. 500, is said to have been the first who applied the 

 idea of attraction to the heavenly bodies, supposing that they all 

 revolve round the earth ; and in this he was followed by the chief 

 atomists [ATOMS]. The first of the moderns, who had correct ideas on 

 this subject was Copernicus, the restorer of the Pythagorean system of 

 the universe, who considered yramty as " a certain natural apjirloicf 

 impressed on matter." Kepler, too, calls gravity " a corporeal and 



