COUNSEL AGAINST ESSEX. 



the suitors to do justice to the causes upon which their 

 interests depend. A more efficacious mode to disentangle 

 difficulty, to expose falsehood, and discover truth, was, 

 perhaps, never devised. It prevents the influence of pas 

 sions by which truth may be impeded, and calls in aid 

 every intellectual power by which justice may be advanced. 

 He was not likely, therefore, to be moved by the censures 

 of those who, ignorant of the principle upon which this 

 practice is founded, imagine advocates to be indiscriminate 

 defenders of right and wrong, (#) instead of being officers 

 assisting in the administration of justice, and acting under 

 the impression that truth is best discovered by powerful 

 statements on both sides of the question. He was not 

 likely to be moved by that ignorant censure which mixes 

 the counsel with his client, instead of knowing that the 

 advocate is indifferent on which side he pleads, whether 

 for the most unfortunate or the most prosperous, for the 

 most virtuous or the most abandoned member of the com 

 munity ; and that, if he were not indifferent, if he were 

 to exercise any discretion as to the party for whom he 

 pleads, the course of justice would be interrupted by pre 

 judice to the suitor, and the exclusion of integrity from the 

 profession. The suitor would be prej udiced in proportion 

 to the respectability of the advocate who had shrunk from 

 his defence, and the weight of character of the counsel 

 would be evidence in the cause. Integrity would be ex 

 cluded from the profession, as the counsel would necessarily 

 be associated with the cause of his client ; with the slan 

 derer, the adulterer, the murderer, or the traitor, whom it 

 may be his duty to defend. 



Such were the various conflicting duties by which a 

 common mind might have been perplexed ; but, strong in 



ji See note 4 B at the end. 



