46 EQUALITY OF SECTS. [CHAP. III. 



Justice of the Common Pleas, to places of the first dignity. In 

 Canada, under British rule, it is the custom to grant licenses to 

 the same individual to practice indifferently in all the courts as 

 advocate, solicitor, attorney, and proctor. When we consider 

 the confidential nature of the business transacted by English at 

 torneys, the extent of property committed to their charge, the 

 manner in which they are consulted in family affairs of the ut 

 most delicacy, as in the framing of marriage contracts and wills, 

 and observe, moreover, how the management of elections falls 

 into their hands, we may well question the policy of creating an 

 artificial line of demarkation between them and the advocates, 

 marked enough to depress their social rank, and to deter many 

 y^ung men of good families, who can best afford to obtain a lib 

 eral education, from entering the most profitable, and, in reality, 

 the most important branch of the profession. 



I have mentioned the Supreme Courts ; in these, in each state, 

 cases are heard involving points at issue between two independent 

 jurisdictions ; and in order to preserve uniformity in the interpret 

 ation of many different codes, as in the statutes passed from time 

 to time by state legislatures, the previous decisions of courts of 

 law are referred to, and the authority of judges of high repute in 

 any part of the Union, and even in Great Britain, frequently 

 cited. As points of international law are perpetually arising 

 between so many jurisdictions, the Supreme Courts afford a fine 

 field for the exercise of legal talent, and for forming jurists oi 

 enlarged views. 



Portland, with 15,000 inhabitants, is the principal city of 

 Maine ; gay and cheerful, with neat white houses, shaded by 

 avenues of trees on each side of the wide streets, the bright sunny 

 air unsullied, as usual in New England, by coal smoke. There 

 are churches here of every religious denomination : Congregation- 

 alists, Baptists, Methodists, Free-will Baptists, Universalists, 

 Unitarians, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Quakers, al] 

 living harmoniously together. The late governor oPthe state 

 was a Unitarian ; and, as if to prove the perfect toleration of 

 churches the most opposed to each other, they have recently had 

 a Honuui Catholic governor 



