An Essay on Professional Ethics. By GEORGE SHARSWOOD. Third Edition. Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson & Company. 1869.

THIS little book, the previous editions of which have been widely read, contains nothing very novel or striking, but is replete with sound sense. The title is happy, and the subject one of great interest. Till the general foundations of ethics are more firmly settled than they now are, it is vain to hope for a scientific treatment of a special department. In fact the very title of legal ethics, like medical jurisprudence, presupposes an approach to the subject from the practical rather than the theoretical side. But that is no reason why the fruits of observation and experience should not be collected, though in an empirical form.

The first part of Judge Sharswood's essay, which treats of legislation and jurisprudence generally, is rather beside the proper subject of the book, nor is it especially good; the best things in it are the illustrations of the bad workings of judge-made law in one or two instances in Pennsylvania, but the subject is too broad to be treated with any satisfactory results in so small a compass.

By far the most valuable portion of the essay is that which deals with the duties that an attorney owes to his client. Judge Sharswood admits that it is pretty generally settled in the United States that a counsellor can maintain an action for his fees, but he evidently regrets that it is so. We confess to sharing somewhat in his feelings. The idea that a lawyer's fee is quiddam honorarium, is a badge of distinction and privilege, and one naturally likes to feel that he belongs to a privileged class; yet it is not a feeling which will bear examination. If lawyers were really a noble body of men, who worked solely for the love of their fellow-creatures or of their profession, that would be all very well; but they are no more public-spirited than any other class in the community. They are, in fact, rather more certain to get paid for their work than most people are. In England, where the rule obtains that a barrister cannot maintain a suit for his fees, the difficulty is solved by his being paid in advance. To proclaim that you compel no man to pay for the services which you render him, and at the same time to refuse to render the services unless you have the pay for them in your pocket, is an absurd and not a very dignified boast. If originally a badge of honor, it is now worn so threadbare as to be rather an unseemly rag. True it is, that a lawyer who is in the habit of suing his clients for his fees is not likely to gain a very desirable position; but the same is true in all relations of life: no man who is in the habit of washing his dirty linen in court is likely to be much loved or respected by his fellow-citizens. Nor is the difficulty which a jury finds in fixing the proper amount of compensation to which a lawyer is entitled any solid objection to the maintenance of a suit by him. The same difficulty arises in every case which involves a question of the value of skilled labor.

The learned author says that a lawyer "has an undoubted right to refuse a retainer, and decline to be concerned in any cause, at his discretion." We are rather surprised at his stating this so strongly; there is certainly a general impression that where the etiquette of the bar is strict, a lawyer is bound to accept a retainer. Yet we think Judge Sharswood's principle is the true one. If lawyers were a small class, it might well be held otherwise; but where there is no difficulty, as there never is any difficulty in this country, of obtaining abundance

of competent advice, there is no reason that a lawyer should be considered a public officer in any such sense as not to be able to pick and choose his business. But it is undoubtedly better for a lawyer to decline to have any thing to do with a particular class of cases than to refuse an individual case; for if he is a man of character and reputation, such refusal, if known, can hardly fail to injure the cause of the man who applies to him.

Judge Sharswood has dealt mainly with the questions of morality involved in particular acts, and has touched more slightly on the general influence of the profession of the law on the intellects and morals of those who practise it.

The consciences of all men are artificial; there is an irresistible tendency in feeling, if not in reason, to substitute the arbitrary rules made by the individual or by a class for the dictates of absolute morality; and it is commonly believed that the practice of the law has a peculiar force in thus perverting the sense of right. Even Judge Sharswood says, "There is certainly, without any exception, no profession in which so many temptations beset the path to swerve from the line of strict integrity; in which so many delicate and difficult questions of duty are continually arising." We greatly doubt the truth of this. Archbishop Whately, with his accustomed good sense, has observed how much greater is the temptation to deceive themselves and others by sophistry for members of the clerical than of the legal profession. The influence of a profession on general character is best shown in matters arising outside of the profession, and we do not think that any candid observer will say that lawyers in these are any less honest than other men.

The practice of the law is, we believe, singularly favorable to the development of character, as compared with most of the other occupations of mankind. As compared with trade, it is far more intellectual; and it has, too, this advantage, that a lawyer is constantly working for objects in the attainment of which he himself has only a secondary interest. That a suit should be gained, is vastly more important to the client than to the counsel; and this work for the interests of others, even though it be for a fee, does keep a man more in sympathy with his kind than work which has for its sole object the heaping up of money for himself.

On the other hand, the law has a marked advantage over the other two socalled learned professions, medicine and the church, in the nature of the subjects out of which those who practise it earn their livelihood. According to some writers, the chief occupations of lawyers would seem to be the hunting down or the defending the lives and reputations of oppressed innocents; but, practically, nine-tenths of law work concerns questions of property, and the more material and coarser interests of mankind. In the most private matters, in those which touch the bodies and souls of men the nearest; it is not the lawyer's trade continually to intermeddle, and he may be thankful that it is not. The temptation to be unctuous outside and callous within, which comes from the constant professional dealing with the deepest sufferings and feelings of mankind, though it be one which so many good men have been able to overcome, is yet stronger than any that besets the ordinary path of the lawyer. The pettifogger is a bad man and a dangerous man, but he is not so bad nor so dangerous as the revivalist or the quack.

A Digest of Parliamentary Law; also, the Rules of the Senate, and House of Representatives of Congress: with the Constitution of the United States, and Amendments thereto, and their History. By O. M. WILSON (Attorney at Law), Secretary of the Indiana Senate, 1865, 1867, 1869. Second Edition. Philadelphia: Kay & Brother. 1869.

IF the rules which govern legislative and other debating bodies can properly be called a branch of the law at all, there is no part of the law which so little deserves the name of a science. It is amazing how the most enlightened people of the world, or if that is too broad an assumption, certainly the people most used to public debate, can be contented with that chaotic collection of arbitrary rules which is dignified by the name of parliamentary law. It can be explained only by the constantly varying character of public assemblies, the younger members of which are unacquainted with the system. Indeed, such a collection of detached rules is to be learned only by long practice, while the few who remain long enough to have mastered the rules, like most men who hold the key to a special kind of knowledge, are more anxious to keep that knowledge to themselves than to diffuse it.

Be that as it may, there is no topic which lends itself so easily to the form of a digest, and which can be so satisfactorily presented in that form as one consisting of independent and disconnected parts, and we therefore welcome this work of Mr. Wilson's as presenting the best method in which his subject can be treated. And he has furnished what is at the same time the most convenient manual, and also the best guide for careful research, with which we are acquainted.

United States Digest; Containing a Digest of Decisions of the Courts of Common Law, Equity, and Admiralty in the United States and in England. By HENRY W. FROST, of the Boston Bar. Vol. XXVI. Annual Digest for 1866. Boston: Little, Brown, & Company. 1869.

DURING the war, the United States Digest fell sadly into arrears; but of late it has been making up the lost ground. Two volumes, those for 1864 and 1865, were published last year (see 2 Am. Law Rev. 724), and the one now before us is made up from the volumes published in 1866. It comprises the third of Wallace, Blatchford's Prize Cases, thirty-eight volumes of State reports, all the volumes and parts of the English Law Reports for 1866, and also the Fourth of Best & Smith, the Thirteenth and Eighteenth of the Common Bench (New Series), and the Second of Hurlstone and Coltman: in all fifty-six volumes and parts of volumes. The statements of the English cases seem to have been taken verbatim from the digests in the first volume of the Law Review.

The lawyer involuntarily sighs as each new volume of the United States Digest is added to the long row already on the shelves, not perhaps from reflecting on that depressing motto which is prefixed to the last edition of the Massachusetts Digest

Queritur ut crescunt tot magna volumina legis:
In promptu causa est, crescit in orbe dolus,

but rather from thinking that here is one more bundle added to the load which threatens to worry out the patience of the common lawyer, if not to break the

back of the common law. Yet this is most ungrateful. It is easy to groan at the United States Digest, but where should we be without it? It is that alone that enables us even to stagger under the burden of accumulated reports.

A Digest of the Reports of the United States Courts, and of the Acts of Congress, from the Organization of the Government to July, 1868. Comprising the Reports of the United States Supreme Court, those of the Circuit and District Courts, and of the various Territorial and Local Courts established by the United States; together with the leading provisions of the Statutes at Large, and important Auxiliary Information upon the National Jurisprudence. Vol. IV. In which Titles of Importance or Special Character have been edited or revised by Hon. SAMUEL BLATCHFORD, Hon. CHARLES L. BENEDICT, Hon. GEORGE SHARSWOOD. The whole compiled by BENJAMIN VAUGHAN ABBOTT and AUSTIN ABBOTT. New York: Diossy & Company. 1869.

THIS volume contains the Titles from Privateers to Wrongs, and a table of cases, and closes this important work. We have noticed the preceding three volumes as they appeared (1 Am. Law Rev. 732; 2 Am. Law Rev. 534; 3 Am. Law Rev. 352), and there is little that we can profitably add to what has been already said on those occasions. We think the editors would have done better to have included cases reversed, affirmed, and overruled in the general table, instead of placing them in a separate list of "Cases Criticised," especially as that list is in the first volume and the general table is in the last.

The business of the United States Circuit and District Courts has largely increased within the last few years, and as a natural consequence the reports of cases in those courts are much more in request. Those reports were at one time a drug in the market, but are now in great demand, and the need of a digest was becoming very pressing, and from the Constitution of the Federal and State courts, these volumes of the Messrs. Abbott contain a digest of substantially all the law in the American books on several branches of jurisprudence; such, for instance, as Admiralty and Patent Law.

Digest of California Reports and Statutes, from the Organization of the State to the Present Time. Comprising the Adjudications of the Supreme Court of the State, as contained in Thirty-four volumes of the published Reports; together with references to and Digest of the most important Statutes, as embodied in the published volumes, from the First to the Seventeenth Session, inclusive; preceded by a Table of Constitutional and Statutory Provisions referred to in the California Reports, with full references to the Reports; and followed by a Table of Cases, and Cases Criticised; and a copious Index. By CHARLES H. PARKER. In Two Volumes. San Francisco: H. H. Bancroft & Company.

1869.

THIS digest contains all that digests should, but often do not, contain. The index and the table of cases, which includes notes giving all the places where each case is criticised or is referred to, leave nothing to be desired. And it is with justifiable pride that Mr. Parker calls attention to the table of those Statutes of the State and of the United States which have been commented on by the

court; the preparation of the table must have taken a prodigious amount of labor.

We think the editor has erred in omitting from the digest the decisions mentioned in the table of "Undigested Cases." They are less than a hundred in number, and though probably worthless, their insertion would make just the difference between completeness and incompleteness. There is carelessness in the printing of foreign words. Of the one hundred and one maxims, thirty are misprinted; and Traite (sic) du contrat de mandat," which is given as the 91st maxim, is no more a maxim than " Byles on Bills."

The Public Laws of the State of Illinois, passed by the Twenty-sixth General Assembly at the Regular Session of 1869; together with Head Notes, Table of Contents, Index, and List of State Officers. By MYRA BRADWELL. Official Edition. Chicago Legal News Company. 1869.

THE energetic Mrs. Bradwell, not resting satisfied with having obtained an act from the Illinois legislature making the Chicago Legal News an authorized medium for the publication of the laws, has published the Statutes passed by the last General Assembly in the present convenient form. Naturally, the law which she has deemed worthy of the first place in the volume, is one in relation to Married Women's Earnings.

The most singular novelty which we have noticed in the volume is an act which provides that "in all cases of felonies which by existing laws are punishable with death, it shall be competent for the jury empanelled to return with their verdict of guilty, and as part of the same, either that the prisoner shall suffer death by hanging as now provided by law, or that he be imprisoned in the penitentiary for the term of his natural life, or for a term not less than fourteen years, as they may decide."

At the end of the volume are lists of the names of State Judges and other officers.

Reports of Cases determined in the Circuit Court of the United States for the First Circuit, from April Term, 1858, to May Term, 1861. By Hon. NATHAN CLIFFORD, LL.D., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, assigned to said Circuit. WILLIAM HENRY CLIFFORD, Reporter. Volume I. Boston: Little, Brown, & Company. 1869.

THE reports for the First Circuit form by far the most complete and the most important collection of decisions in any of the subordinate courts of the United States: from 1812, when the first volume of Gallison begins, an unbroken series runs through Gallison, Mason, Sumner, and Story, in all thirteen volumes, to the death of Judge Story. Then begin the Reports of Woodbury and Minot, of which three volumes have been printed; one or two more still remain in manuscript, never having been able to find a publisher, and making a break of four years in the printed series. The two valuable volumes of Judge Curtis's decisions, reported by himself, cover the space from 1851 to 1856; for the last year or two before Judge Curtis's resignation there are no reports, and the present volume begins from the period when Mr. Justice Clifford, the present occupant, took his seat on the bench with April term, 1858, and covers a period of three years.