mission.' Some misgiving, however, seems to have seized him as to its ample adequacy' to subdue three hundred millions of people; for in the next page we find, that 'poltroons as the Chinese appear to be, yet, were we to arouse the spirit of the nation against us, they might and would prove more formidable than we imagine.' In such a contingency he calls to his aid his second proposition, which is as monstrous as his first-namely, to avoid irritating the people, and on every occasion to disclaim any hostile feeling towards them.-Your government has injured us,' we should say, and against them our hostility is directed, not against you.'-In plain terms, his advice is, to set the people against the government!— an honourable employment, truly, for a king's ambassador, and a British admiral! Are we then, we would ask, wantonly to trample on all law, right, and justice, to forward the views chiefly of a set of opium-smugglers and unprincipled adventurers? Are we thus to force ourselves on a peaceable people, who are willing to receive us, but not over-desirous of the connexion, knowing, as they but too well do, how reluctant we always have been, but more so now than ever, to conform to the laws and regulations of their empire?-But Mr. Lindsay has been so completely answered by Sir George Staunton, as to leave us nothing further to add on this part of the subject.

There is one question put by Mr. Lindsay to Lord Palmerston, which certainly requires an answer. 'Are we (he asks) to continue to maintain an establishment at Macao, at an expense of more than 20,000l. a-year, without any assignable duties whatever?' We trust his lordship can answer, that this not merely useless, but mischievous, establishment is, before this, broken up. The squandering of such a sum is, in itself, bad and unjustifiable; but, what is worse, through it the national character has grievously suffered in the eyes of every foreigner that frequents Macao. They see that the Chinese take every occasion to pass some slight on the king's commissioners; that they are not permitted to show themselves, where alone they could be of any use, at Canton; while the traders of all descriptions, who go and return to and from Canton when it suits them, laugh at the poor prisoners shut up in Macao, nearly a hundred miles from where they ought to be; their only business, and only consolation, we suppose, being that of drawing quarterly for their large salaries. Their situation is degrading enough, and we only hope they have had notice to quit. If we were asked what we would recommend as a substitute, our answer would be-Meet the wishes of the Chinese government, by sending out some intelligent person conversant with commercial concerns, and let him be armed with the usual consular powers to control the irregular proceedings carrying on by our too often rude

and

and thoughtless countrymen at Canton. The Chinese wish it, our position requires it, and there is a precedent for it. In November, 1699, a consul's commission was sent out for the chief of the Company's factory. If this, or something of the kind, be not done, and done speedily, we augur a total cessation, and that at no distant period, of our intercourse with China.

Almost simultaneously with Mr. Davis's work, there has appeared, in a popular miscellany entitled The Edinburgh Cabinet Library,' a very careful and elaborate compilation on the history and condition of the Chinese empire. We strongly recommend these volumes also, to all who wish to understand the subject; and we would, in particular, point attention to that part of the third volume which treats of the zoology and botany of China. These essays are in all respects admirable-and they supply almost the only deficiency of any importance in Mr. Davis's book. Altogether, what we have seen of the Edinburgh Cabinet Library' impresses us with respect for the caution and sagacity of its conductors; and we hope their enterprise may be more permanently successful than so many others of the same sort which have lately disappointed the ardent projectors both here and in Scotland.

ART. IX.-A Popular and Practical Introduction to Law Studies. By Samuel Warren, Esq., F.R.S., of the Inner Temple. London. 12mo. 1835.

THE

HE influence of lawyers on the political institutions of their country is, doubtless, like all other influences, of a mixed nature, good and evil-but it would not be difficult to show that it must be, in the main, of a beneficial character. He who has a tenacious reverence to the inviolate authority of jurisprudence is already half a statesman. But not only does the jurist assist in preserving amongst the people a disposition of undisputing obedience to established rules,-the lawyers are always, as a body, disposed to assume a fixed and uncompromising attitude against the governing power, whenever this would break in upon the peaceable supremacy of the law. Willing to be controlled to the utmost even by the words of a statute, or the perchance almost fortuitous authority of a precedent, they look with extreme jealousy upon all extraneous control. They are a sort of civil priesthood administering the rites of society, and love not to be too much interfered with. Regarding their profession as based on the very first necessity of social man, and their science as composed of that which is no longer valuable when it ceases to be recognized as permanent and

supreme,

supreme, they have a natural tendency to resist the encroachment of all sudden, self-willed, unlegislating power. If judges, when reduced to a perpetual dependence upon the monarch, have proved the instruments of an arbitrary dominion, it must be remembered that their influence was in these cases rather overborne than exercised. It was the weakness of the lawyers, not their strength, that was in fault.

In England, a Bar which practices before an independeut judge, and appeals to a jury for a verdict, must become as much distinguished for its spirit of freedom as for its attachment to established law. It has become, indeed, the best representative of the true genius of our commonwealth. Here it is that the old chartered spirit of English liberty will ever find a shelter and a sanctuary; and here it is, we will venture to add, that the new temper of French democracy will meet its sternest opposition. It is quite fitting and highly politic in the innovators of our time to speak bitterly of the bar, and of the influence of lawyers. Never were two things more utterly repugnant than the love of libertyas expressed and preserved in the institutions of our country-and the late-imported passion which now assumes the same captivating name;—the one, a bold assertion of individual rights—the other, a league of a class for the attainment of power;-the one, flinching nothing from its fullest claim, and detracting nothing from an acknowledged obedience-the other, a blind desire for dominion, to be attained only by a still blinder subjection to the will of a vast conspiracy. As the one has found, and will continue to find, its bold and faithful champion in the higher orders of the legal profession, so we predict with confidence that the latter will encounter its most persevering antagonist in the same body of men;-a body too learned to idolize ignorance, and too well pleased with having escaped all degrading dependence upon the crown, to risk its dignity, and the value of its services, to the capricious forbearance of a despot populace.

But not only on our political institutions do the lawyers exert a notorious influence, they bear no trivial sway over the manners, temper, and opinions of private society. No profession more tasks all the varied qualities of the mind-none calls for greater intellectual energy, or more diversified attainments-none more than their's is capable of rearing up those busy, forward, domineering spirits, so well fitted to mould and indoctrinate the private circle which surrounds them. No knowledge lies dead and unprofitable in their store-house-all is for use. Not, surely, that their appropriate science of jurisprudence requires a wider scope of information than that which falls beneath the view of the physician, or the divine;-but from their habits of contention and display

they

they become, at all times, greedy and avaricious of whatever it is a pride amongst men to be informed of. They are the chief traffickers in thought-they are merchants in this commodity of knowledge-they are great diffusers of the intellectual capital of the country-direct antagonists to the principle of sloth and dormancy-ever vocal-perpetual challengers to the endless war of words. Wherever, in the family group, there is a son educating for the bar, there may be observed a process of wholesome agitation of the mind. His profession courts the public gaze, and calls on all mankind to be spectators. The brilliant prizes which hang over it give to the humblest member some stirrings of ambition. If not Lord Chancellor, and never likely to become so, yet is he of the stuff of which Lord Chancellors are made. It is through his profession almost exclusively that the plebeian can hope to rise by his own efforts, and take rank with the nobles of the land. And he who contemplates that extinction of the peerage which some talk or rave of would do well to reflect on the loss that would follow if those few but glittering honours were withdrawn which urge on the erudite labours of the already encumbered advocate, and throw their star-like splendour over the dim and colourless multitude of the profession. Truly all is vanity, as the wise king has declared; but yet we like some diversity in our vanities, and prefer a mixture of such follies, as the love of fame, and station, and intellectual pre-eminence, to the uniform lust of gold which would occupy their place.

Here we shall probably be encountered by the objection that the morality, at least, of society is indebted for no improvement to a body of men-' hired masters of tongue-fence,' as Milton, in one of his prose works, has called them-whose occupation it is to argue on either side of every question, according to their retainer. It may be worth while, for a moment, to look this objection in the face. In the first place, it will hardly be contended that such a profession as that of the bar is unnecessary. The rules of law must partake of the intricacy and complication of those circumstances of life over which they are to preside. Were there no such institution as that of advocates, every man who had a cause to plead must first apply himself to a laborious study of jurisprudence-a science surrounded with unavoidable technicalities, and often embodying a wisdom necessarily subtle and remote. A class of scientific interpreters who can speak to the judge in the language of the law becomes indispensable. Neither ought these interpreters to limit themselves to a statement of their own strict and impartial view of the case of him whom they represent. By so doing they would, as Dr. Johnson has observed, be taking on themselves the office of their

superior

superior on the bench. At all events, they would not diminish the difficulties of the judge, who would still be presented with the facts of the case as seen through the preconceptions of another, and who would find himself removed even yet further from the real parties to the suit. But by reasoning in the spirit, and with the passions of the several litigants, the rival advocates afford the judge almost the same materials on which to form his decision, as if he had heard the parties themselves, speaking with all the advantage they would have acquired from a full knowledge of the law.

There are times, indeed, when our indignation is apt to arise on observing a villanous transaction laboriously defended. But whenever this shock to our own moral sensibility is felt, we may be sure that, as far, at least, as we are ourselves concerned, no bad influence has followed on the efforts of the orator. In truth, however, we do not think that cases can often arise in which the counsel need feel reluctant to exert himself to the utmost for his client. So much obscurity hangs over the real motives of human conduct-it is so difficult to determine to what strength of temptation the conscience of the culprit had, at length, submitted that there are, perhaps, few occasions on which a man is not entitled to have all that can be said in his favonr urged upon his judges. There are hidden virtues of the vile, as there are secret failings of the good; and we are never more liable to error than in the opinion we form either of extraordinary turpitude or surpassing excellence. Indeed, those very instances in which the indignant voice of the public would at once decide the fate of the accused-in which they would listen most impatiently to the least suggestion in favour of the criminal-are those which most imperatively demand the fearless assistance of the advocate.

But the necessity of this system of advocacy being admittedit will still be urged that the habit of arguing, at convenience, on either side of every question must be detrimental to integrity of character, both in him who practises, and in the public who witness it. This is a sort of à priori conclusion, based on a narrow apprehension of the subject, and not justified by an appeal to experience. That which is openly avowed, and by all society admitted, cannot be the object of a moral reproach to the agent himself. The advocate, therefore, of a person whose conduct he secretly condemns, or of a cause whose justice he would in private deny, commits no violence upon his conscience,-forces no scruple of reluctant integrity, and cannot be supposed to have injured the general susceptibility of his moral feelings. On all other occasions he will exhibit the same love of truth, and the same jealous regard to the reputation of his word, as distinguish every other liberal

and