advocate, by the sacred duty which he owes his client, knows, in the discharge of that office, but one person in the world, that client and none other. To save that client by all expedient means, to protect that client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among others to himself, is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; and he must not regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction, which he may bring upon any other. Nay, separating even the duties of a patriot from those of an advocate, and casting them, if need be, to the wind, he must go on reckless of the consequences, if his fate it should unhappily be, to involve his country in confusion for his client's protection." Brougham used similar language at the dinner given to the great French advocate, Berryer, in 1864, in the Middle Temple Hall. It was on that occasion that Sir Alexander Cockburn ventured on a modification of Brougham's statement. He coupled with Brougham's assertion "this qualification and this restriction-that the arms which he wields are to be the arms of the warrior and not of the assassin. It is his duty to strive to accomplish the interests of his client per fas but not per nefas; it is his duty, to the utmost of his power, to seek to reconcile the interests he is bound to maintain, and the duty it is incumbent upon him to discharge, with the eternal and immutable interests of truth and justice.” Few will deny that Sir Alexander Cockburn's view was the correct one. It has been stated that Brougham greatly admired Cicero. He had the Roman always before his eyes. Lord Durham nick-named him Cicero Brougham and Vaux. He even adopted pedantic Ciceronian phrases, like "much meditating," in imitation of the Roman orator. "I was amused," wrote Cobden to Chevalier in 1861, "at your diplomacy in comparing Brougham to Cicero. This must have delighted him. He has, I suspect, always had the great Roman in his eye." Brougham particularly admired and sought to imitate the universality of Cicero's accomplishments. In his own case this led to superficiality and shallowness, and ultimately damaged his reputation and fame. "It is this attempt at universality," says Cobden, "which has been the great error and failing of Lord Brougham's public life. He has touched everything and finished nothing." Brougham, with his boisterous eloquence and his eccentric indiscretions, was a turbulent force in the life of his time. "There never was such a nuisance as the man is," said the old-fashioned lawyers of his day. Tossing on the waves of public life, he seemed ever to be on the point of shipwreck. He might not unfittingly be described by some lines of the Elizabethan poet, Chapman— "A spirit that on life's rough sea Loves to have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind, J. A. LOVAT-Fraser. A V. THE REMUNERATION OF VALUERS. MONG the many important and, from some points of view, painful reflections evoked at the ultimate meeting of the shareholders of the Law Guarantee Accident and Trust Society1 was the subject which appears as the title of this article. To a question put to the chairman: In what way were the valuers paid, the reply was that they were paid by the person applying for the guarantee, and that in general the practice was that a fixed fee was paid in any event, and that a much larger fee was payable if the 1 See Financial News, Dec. 14th, 1909. business was completed. It is hardly surprising that businesses had a tendency to be completed, to the final undoing, so the event proved, of hapless shareholders. It is, perhaps, unfair to lay especial emphasis on the particular case of the Law Guarantee Society. It has long been a practice among valuers, from members of the Surveyors' Institute downwards, to claim payment by a percentage on the amount of the valuation, whether of land, houses, leases, furniture, plate, or chattels generally. When they act as agents for sale it is good sense that their remuneration should depend on and be proportionate to the price they are able to secure for their employers. But the principle should surely be different where the interests of employer and valuer are not necessarily identical but, on the contrary, in a greater or less degree opposed. The man who is minded to set a reserve price on an estate which is being put up to auction desires to be accurately informed, so far as accuracy is possible in such matters, and yet the judgment of the valuer may be swayed, unconsciously, be it presumed, by the fact that every hundred pounds added to the reserve means at least another guinea in his pocket. Executors may be assured by those they instruct to appraise their testator's effects that probate valuations are of the most merciful description, and yet as they weigh the silver and scrutinise china marks there is latent the fact that the higher the figure the valuers may feel bound to put upon the articles in question the more generous will be their reward. The employer knows the terms of the employment, it will be urged. No attempt is made to conceal the real nature of the bargain he is entering into. He is dealing with men of a profession in which the code of honour is high. It is open to him to make an arrangement of a different kind, if he chooses. True. Most of the leading firms will now agree to value for probate by the hour or day; but it is not the rule. The writer remembers, some years ago, wanting to have a valuation for probate made in a watering place in the west of England of the jewels and plate of an old lady who had lived more economically than her means necessitated in furnished apartments. Not one of half-a-dozen auctioneers and silversmiths on whom he called would do so except upon the terms of an ad valorem commission. There was an understanding to that effect among the valuers of the town, was the invariable answer. I mentioned the fact to the landlord, and expressed surprise that plenty of qualified men were not forthcoming who would be glad to earn a couple of guineas by glancing over the articles in question, which were set out in one room. He not unnaturally had a particular friend who was a licensed valuer, and who in less than halfan-hour had appended his name to a most merciful appraisement, but albeit determined not to submit to what I considered an utterly evil system, I should have been glad had the valuation been made by one in whose judgment I had rather more confidence. The Courts apparently view with suspicion any claim for remuneration based on an ad valorem principle. Wherever it can be shown that the employer is not in fact aware of the precise bargain into which he has entered with the valuer, the latter will usually fail to enforce payment on an ad valorem basis by proceedings at law. The first Lord Coleridge, sitting in the Court of Appeal, once said, in disallowing a claim by a surveyor to be paid for qualifying himself as a witness by a percentage on the sum in dispute, that no rule which surveyors could make among themselves would ever induce him to sanction such a mode of payment. Payment could only be ordered with reference to the work done.1 This repugnance to the ad valorem principle of payment under all circumstances doubtless arises from the fear that, once admitted, the wider and inflexible rule of 1 Drew v. Josolyn [1888], 4 T. L. R. 717. 66 law, that interest must never conflict with duty, may sooner or later be violated. A broker employed to buy shares may not sell his own even at the market price. "When a man employs another as his agent, it is on the faith that such agent will act in the matter purely and disinterestedly for the benefit of his employer, and assuredly not with the "notion that the person whose assistance is required as agent has himself in the very transaction an interest directly opposed to that of his principal. It is not "necessary to show that fraud was intended or that loss "afterwards took place in consequence of these transactions, "because the defendant, though he might have entertained no intention whatever of fraud, was placed in such a "situation of trust with regard to the plaintiff that the "transaction could not in the contemplation of the Court "be considered valid."1 66 66 The principle was further emphasised in Harrington v. the Victoria Graving Dock Company Limited [1878], 3 Q. B. D. 549. A shipbuilding company, knowing by one of its officials that a certain engineer had been employed by a railway company to advise on the repairs needed by vessels of their fleet, engaged him to superintend the execution of the repairs should they be fortunate enough to get the railway company's contract. They did get it, but the directors (disapproving the action of their official) then declined to pay the engineer an agreed fee for superintendence. He sued them for it, but failed, although the jury found as a fact that the employment and the anticipated profit from it did not bias his mind in advising the railway company to accept the defendants' tender. "The tendency “of such an agreement as this," said Cockburn, L.C.J., "must be to bias the mind of the person employed and to "lead him to act disloyally to his principals. 66 It is quite immaterial that the employers were not in fact 1 Per Lord Langdale, M. R., in Gillett v. Peppercorne [1840], 3 Beav. 78. |