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justice. Naturally enough the lawyer with his hair-splitting distinctions was first looked upon with much of that suspicion which surrounds him even now, though in a lesser degree perhaps, and for different reasons. To them the lawyer was a shrewd man who prevented rather than produced justice. The resulting friction between the lawyer and this democratic plain-spoken people is shown in the laws of the frontier legislative bodies. Virginia in 1645 undertook to discourage lawyers by forbidding the taking of fees; Massachusetts in 1663 excluded lawyers from membership in the Great and General Court, and the fundamental Constitution of Georgia declared it a "base and vile" thing to plead for money, prohibiting any one but a near kinsman to plead their cause, and forcing such a person to take oath that he had received no money therefor. Plymouth by an ordinance of July 7, 1681, regulated the fee to five shillings per day, and two and one-half shillings per case if he had two cases in one day. An act of the territory of Utah approved February 18, 1852 reads: "No person or persons, employing counsel in any of the courts of this territory, shall be compelled by any process of law to pay the counsel so employed, for any services rendered as counsel, before or after or during the process of trial in the case." One author in describing early New England lawyers goes so far as to say that they are not respected, being suspected of "trick and chicanery." Ex-President Roosevelt in his "Winning of the West," speaking of Kentucky says: "The exclusion of the lawyers from law-making bodies was one of the darling plans of the ordinary sincere rural demagogue of the day." This universal distrust and prejudice against the lawyer has been overcome to a considerable extent, though it is by no means extinct. Any unpopular decision is sure to arouse the condemnation of bench and bar. The recall of judges and of judicial

3 Knapp, Lawyers, Page 15.

4 Roosevelt, T., Winning of the West, Vol. IV., 192.

decisions-almost dead issues already-was the latest indication of this distrust among the people, caused of course by their inability to appreciate legal reasoning, and their willingness at the instigation of demagogues to throw on the courts and the lawyer the criticism that should fall elsewhere.

The frontier state and the march of the frontier state westward decade by decade are apparent on even a cursory examination of the census returns. Livingston's Law

Registers show the same movement westward by the lawyer. The register for 1868 shows returns of lawyers for States which in 1852 had not reached the "lawyer-frontier" stage. In the very same way every industry moved westward, each succeeding stage having more of the complexities of civilization than the preceding. This whole movement disappeared in the Rockies where the march from east and west coalesced.

In his course westward the lawyer followed for the most part the same parallels of latitude. The lawyer from the south moved through Kentucky and Tennessee into the southern parts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, the lawyer from New England, coming a little later, went directly west into the northern parts of these three States. Not only the lawyer but all movements of population followed these same lines in these same States. The result is that even today Ohio, Indiana and Illinois have mixed institutions of North and South. This might be illustrated with many examples, but we here are interested in the lawyer and we shall confine our study to him, and especially to the State of Illinois where the evidence is most abundant. In looking over the biographies of Illinois lawyers we find that almost uniformly the lawyers in the southern part are from Kentucky, and those in the northern part from New England. The southern lawyer was apt to migrate by easy stages, while the northern lawyer would come more often from extreme east to the remotest frontier. The education

of the southern lawyer was very limited, and he was therefore the more typical frontier lawyer. The northern lawyer, on the other hand, was usually a graduate of some eastern college, having in addition a far more regular legal training. If the southern lawyer had a liberal education previous to his legal, it was probably received in some northern college. So today our northern colleges and universities are filled with southern students though the reverse is quite unheard of. The training of the southern lawyer was more irregular, so that he, rather than the lawyer from the northern States, should lay claim to the title "The Lawyer on the Frontier." The northern lawyer lacked the frontier western spirit, failing to win western juries even where they had the better side of the case," while a rugged and robust type like Lincoln or Douglass could readily lead a frontier jury to sympathize with them.

"No partic

James Bryce in his introduction to the American Commonwealth, says of the foreigner: "He is struck by certain things which a native does not think of explaining, because they are too obvious." For this reason the impressions of several foreigners who in their travels saw the frontier lawyer in action, may be interesting. Wood draws the following picture of the frontier court: ular dress was worn. As the heat was great, sel took off his coat and pleaded without it. wigs or black gowns were worn, there was no and quibbles than in Westminster Hall." He admitted that "while not so polite as you," they were "not devoid of eloquence." Another writes that the lawyers were "easy and colloquial" but "not distinguished." He remarked further that he saw one judge with three other "dirty looking associates" who were dressed in coarse homespun

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one of counAlthough no end of quirks

7 Bryce, J., American Commonwealth, Vol. 1:8.

8 Wood's Eng. Prairie, Thwaites' Travels, Vol. 10:355.

garments, much like the low fen farmers of England. Everything was free and easy, the clothes were shabby, and almost all in court chewed tobacco freely. Later a particular lawyer shocked him by removing his waistcoat, though he admitted that these "coarse, dirty judges compared well with the English, showing a great desire to take up law."10 Another traveler facetiously remarks that "if we may judge from the grammatical and orthographic inaccuracies, they may be lawyers but not scholars.''11 Harsh as the above comments may be, they represent a good picture of the informality of the frontier.

The education of the frontier lawyer, and this is almost true of all lawyers seventy-five or more years ago, shows a strange contrast with present requirements. The New England lawyer had a college education, followed by teaching school and reading law a few years. The typical frontier lawyer seldom had a college preparation, having to content himself with what the frontier offered. But he too studied law while teaching school. The studying of law was often carried on under the direction of lawyers in their office, or just as often at home from a few classical text-books. To become a lawyer was a comparatively simple matter. There was either no bar examination or the examination was a mere formality, although it did pretend to be more than that. A library might consist of a few classical texts. The practical part of the law office probably was more important than anything else. Flint observed that Blackstone Commentaries was considered the great medium of instruction. Prospective lawyers read Blackstone carefully, wrote a short time for a practicing lawyer, and were then admitted to the bar, although the admission to the bar was often dispensed with.12 In addition to Blackstone, the conscientious lawyer might read a

9 Faux's Journal, Thwaites' Travels, Vol. 11:59,75.

10 Ibid, 12:45.

11 Flint's Letters, Thwaites' Travels, Vol. 9:195.

12 Flint's Letters from Amer., Thwaites' Travels, Vol. 9:195.

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few other classical texts. Principles of law, rather than precedents were emphasized. Flint wrote: "The profession owes much of its respectability to the ingress of young gentlemen of liberal education from the Atlantic States, who research in the history of cases, who have good libraries. Frontier lawyers like Lincoln complained of their lack of a classical education and strove hard to acquire it by constant study at home. Compare with this scanty preparation the present piling up of decisions and statutes in forty-eight States with the necessity of a huge library, the strict requirements of the law schools, and the State bar examination with its thirty or more subjects.

No man was more versatile than the frontier lawyer. He was not only a lawyer, but a dabbler in almost every other profession. Perhaps there was too little legal business for the number of lawyers. Then too a more complex civilization permits of greater specialization in a profession. At any rate, a lawyer might be a real estate man, a surveyor, a teacher, a storekeeper, a horse dealer, a land speculator, or almost anything and everything else. Besides any one or more of these he was always a politician. Law and politics went hand in hand. Many accounts tell us that the lawyer filled all the "respectable government offices,''14 one writer saying "by intrigue." This was true at least of William Foster, a great rascal, who, in 1818, entered the State of Illinois, and, after living there three weeks, so manipulated the Legislature that he was elected associate judge of the Supreme Court. He never studied law, never took his seat, drew one year's salary and resigned. The rest of his life was continuel in swindling the unwary.15 Another instance of an incompetent man holding office was that of Judge Browne of Illinois. Once at the close of a trial he told counsel that he wanted to deliberate the case, whereupon the counsel for the defense rose and told him

13 Ibid, 9:195. 14 Cummings, Travels, Vol. 4:222.

West, Thwaites'

15 Palmer, Bar of Illinois, p. 20.

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