i 4 6 LAW 



One of these is the splendid professional tradition 

 dominant in French courts of justice. 1 The position of 

 the advocate, in courage, independence, professional 

 privilege, and fidelity to his client, is comparable only 

 to that of our own professional predecessors in England, 

 Ireland, Scotland, and our own country. The judges, 

 having come up to the Bench from the Bar, as in England 

 and America, have shared this spirit of professional 

 independence. No other country is as notable as 

 France in this common trait. Four times in French 

 legal history has the entire Bar resigned its functions, 

 and left the courts without lawyers, rather than submit 

 to the arbitrary dictation of princes and politicians. The 

 glorious incidents that are treasured in our professional 

 annals find their parallels in all periods of the French Bar. 

 If we are proud for this reason of the names of Coke, of 

 Mansfield, of Erskine, of Brougham, of Denman, of Otis, 

 of Hamilton, of Henry, of Choate, France too has its tradi- 

 tions, of Talon, exiled by the crafty Cardinal Mazarin 

 for resisting an unjust decree; of Servin, who fell dead 

 while uttering a similar protest in the presence of Cardinal 

 Richelieu and Louis XIII; of Elie de Beaumont, whose 

 memoir against the unjust execution of Galas- was read 

 throughout Europe and led to Voltaire's famous diatribe 

 against the criminal law; of Bellart, who defended many of 

 the victims of the Terror, before the most bloodthirsty 

 Tribunal the world has ever seen; of Malesherbes, who 

 dared to act as counsel for the unfortunate Louis XVI be- 

 fore the Convention, and himself met his client's fate at the 

 guillotine two years later; of Bonnet, who defied Napoleon 

 in defending General Moreau ; of Berry er, who defended the 



1 As far back as Juvenal's day, Gaul was famous throughout the 

 Empire for its lawyers: " Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Britannos" 

 (Satire xv, 1. in) ; " Accipiat te Gallia vel potius nutricula causidicorum 

 Africa, si placuit mercedem imponere linguae" (id. vii, 1. 147). 



