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Attention should be paid to the manner in which written opinions are drawn up, for a lawyer's reputation is formed by his written opinions, as well as by his pleadings in the courts. The student should be taught to revise and compress his opinions, and if he give reasons for his advice, to give them as strongly and concisely as possible. Lord Mansfield advised a military gentleman, who was going to preside in a civil government abroad, never to give any reasons for his decrees.— "You will probably decide justly," said his lordship, “but you might give weak reasons for your decisions: and then you would be called upon to defend your reasons, which you might find more difficult than to maintain your de"crees." Upon similar principles, many counsellors at the bar give their opinions without assigning their reasons: in general this may be prudent; but it will sometimes be for their interest, when they meet with well-informed clients, to explain to them the grounds and the rationale of the advice which they give; and at all events, when they come to plead as barristers, they must have the power of developing the reasons of their judgment, and the previous exercise of putting their ideas in just method in writing, will much facilitate their speaking with lucid order. Order assists us both in reasoning, and in communicating our conviction to others; and the practice of writing down our thoughts leads constantly to the detection of those faults in arrangement, which confuse and confound the understanding..

The great Chancellor d'Aguesseau, in speaking of the use of order and method in reasoning, observes, that, " By a secret linking together of propositions equally simple and evident,

"the mind is led from truths to truths, so that we are sur

prised to see that method alone has served for proof, and "that order alone has produced conviction "." Condillac has raised his whole system of identical propositions, and his whole art de raisonner, and art d'écrire, upon this one fundamental truth. Some affect to despise method, and to trust entirely to the suggestions of their own invention in speaking and writing, and they declaim with vehemence against the trammels and fetters of order and arrangement, which they imagine to be inimical to the powers and success of genius; but these are like the clamours of a mob of ignorant or cunning artisans, who would destroy the machinery which facilitates labour, merely because they do not comprehend its use, or because they dread that it may ultimately throw them out of employment.

To a course of instruction under the direction of a man of learning and experience must be joined frequent attendance in the courts. All lawyers, and all who write on their education, agree in insisting upon this as indispensable. It may be feared, that farther advice on this subject may sound to the young student merely as words of course; but good sense can seldom boast the charms of novelty. What is true, must have been frequently observed and often repeated. Quintilian, or Tacitus, or whoever wrote the excellent essay on the causes of the decline of eloquence, observes, that Ro

"Par un secret enchaînement de propositions également simples et évi"dentes, l'esprit est conduit de vérités en vérités; en sorte que l'on est surpris "de voir que la simple méthode a servi de preuve, et que l'ordre seul a pro"duit la conviction."

man orators declined from the time, that they frequented the schools of rhetoricians and sophists, where theoretic questions were proposed and debated, instead of attending to real business, and taking an active part in the affairs of life. There is always, as these experienced advisers observe, a wide difference between imaginary cases and real occurrences; and the mode of discussing or declaiming in those holiday trials of eloquence, is essentially different from the actual course of political or judicial business. A false taste for glaring eloquence, a technical arrangement of sentences and parts of an harangue, habits of recurrence to commonplace topics, and of pompous and wearisome amplifications, were acquired at these rhetorical schools: all which were useless and unfavourable to the scholar, when he passed from fiction to reality, and attempted to apply his rules to practice. Upon similar principles young lawyers may be advised to prefer attending trials and listening to legal pleading, or parliamentary debates at their leisure hours, rather than to frequent debating societies. It may be of service to try their powers of elocution now and then at such places, and to accustom themselves to speak before numbers. It is said, that some of our best parliamentary debaters began and seasoned themselves in this manner; but the continuance of the practice, and the forming the taste and habits in these mock debates, are hurtful. He who is to make himself a lawyer, has at this period of his life no time to waste, and the more regular attention he gives in the courts, the more useful practical knowledge he will acquire.

Much may be learned by conversation; the peculiar de

gree of interest and animation, which is raised by discussing questions, and talking of events that are actually passing in the world, must give to this species of instruction a prodigious effect.

In attending trials, the use and the difficulty of cross-examining well must strike every auditor. The sensible author of Deinology has written an essay on cross-examination, in which he endeavours to call the attention of lawyers to this branch of their business; he points out some of the defects, into which unskilful examiners are most apt to fall, and suggests some rules, by which these errours may be avoided. Much however yet remains to be learned. The bullying tone, which some cross-examiners assume towards witnesses, cannot be too strongly reprobated. This betrays at once ignorance and illiberality. A well informed and gentlemanlike lawyer does not attempt to puzzle or alarm every witness, who is brought into court; he does not try his wit upon the person whom he examines, nor does he ask a multitude of irrelevant questions; he knows precisely what questions are most likely to bring out the evidence he wants; he does not frighten a poor innocent ignorant witness from telling the truth; but he prevents an artful rogue from telling falsehoods, by simply impressing on him the sense of the danger of detection: and where there are contradictory or evasive evidences, he arranges and confronts them, so as to make their mistakes or prevarications apparent; he establishes truth by showing the inconsistencies of falsehood. The argumentum ad absurdum is of sovereign use in cross examination, and the arithmetician's rule of false, applied to facts and assertions, instead of

to numbers and quantities, may here be dexterously and successfully employed by the logician. Indeed, the student should not confine his view merely to points of law; he should remark, what habits, manners, and temper conduce to a lawyer's advancement and reputation. Temper, he will observe, is indispensably requisite. A man with the most powerful eloquence, and the most solid learning and law, if he have not temper, may at any moment be thrown off his guard by the most contemptible opponent, and losing the command of his faculties and all the advantage of his natural and acquired superiority, he will, in his intemperate haste to confound his adversaries, degrade and disgrace himself. When the rhinoceros is driven to distraction by the stings of the little insects, which insinuate themselves between the chinks of his coat of mail, to rid himself of his tiny tormentors, he rolls in the mud, to the great amusement of the spectators.

Beside the natural warmth and irritability of temper, there is sometimes an artificial warmth and affected vehemence and severity of expression, which gentlemen of the bar assume, to prove that they are in earnest in the defence of their clients; they sometimes overact their parts, and tear the passion to rags: indeed this trick of acting indignation is now too hacknied to have even good stage effect, and this overstrained oratory fatigues both the performer and the audience, like fine singing in a feigned voice. Good taste, formed by observation, will guard young barristers against these faults. The rising generation of lawyers will, it is to be hoped, avoid that sort of personal invective and taunting language, which disgraces individuals, and lowers the dig

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