When Tilden came under the an of the American Lawn Tennis Association for writing ar-tides about tennis, the Press of five continents devoted columns to it for days and days. A somewhat similar case in respect of the English Bar is disposed of ina corner of the "Times" and we doubt if twenty other papers even notice it, Some barristers have been giving legal advice in newspapers, and the Bar Council has decided that this is contrary.to professional quetta. Among legal journals it has become an increasing practice, we read, to advise or profess to advise their subscribers on points of law. 'It is be-Tieved," says the Bar Council, that in some cases the advice is represented as being counsel's opinion'."
The General Council resolved that it is contrary to professional etiquette for a barrister to answer Tegal questions in newspapers oF periodicals, whether for a salary or ordinary literary remuneration, whether hig name is directly indirectly disclosed or liable to disclosed, and whether the questions answered have reference to concrete eases which have factually arisen or are likely to arise for decision, All the Inns of Court have been circularized and offenders are liable to suspension or even to be disbarred, Professional. etiquette is a is vigilant watch-dog, yet it seems curiously partial in its effects. It could hardly appear to stricter in any calling than in that of doctors. Nothing that savours of advertising is permitted in the British medical profession and, until a few years ago, it was generally held that 'a doctor was entitled to refuse to give evidence in a law court on the health of a patient: this however, is not the case, On the other hand, it appears to be missible for doctors to write in_mewspapers under their own names for payment, which is surely advertising rather effectively, Newspapers themselves have their code of etiquette, as for instance that only in very excegional circumstances, volving a question of gre public importance, may a letter be accepted attacking what has appeared in another paper, un-Jess that paper has previously refused to publish it. The Church would certainly have its rules of etiquette, but writing in the Press, even on the most secular matters, evidently does not come under them. Nor are statesmen forbidden to air their views in print for pelf, though they do so less frequently than a few years ago, when the prac: tice was becoming something of scandal The revolt of the Law Lords, mentioned in these columns a few days ago, against a para graph in the Rating Bill, which would have enabled the Ministry of Health to get a general ruling from the Judges on certain doubtful points, and then proceed to action, gives one an insight into the Bar Council's reasons for forbidding barristers to give opinions in newspapers.
Certainly no profession in England is more hedged about with yules than that of the law.
When we think of the tremendous advantages which its complicated ways put in the hands of unscrupulous practitioners, this strictness is easily understood, An extreme case of violation of all legal etiquette was seen not many weeks ago in the ional Court, when a Chinese lawyer defending an armed robber actually suggested to him in examination that he had been tortured and the methods of torture supposed to have been applied, So far from stopping him, the judge alluded to these most improper suggesgjons in his summing up. In England a barrister attempting methods of this kind would, of course, have The whole system in England is designed the administration of justice as impersonal as possible, "Phot is, perhaps, the chief reason why judges and barristers wear wigs and gowns in order, as it were, to divest them for the time being of their ordinary human attributes. The Court becomes a sort of machine. One part of it pulls one way, one the other, and a third part is designed to preserve the balance and finally decide which way the seales of Justice incline. The question is often debated how far a counsel is entitled to defend a client whom he knows to be guilty. Actually one imagines that very few counsel would do such a thing. But on the grand principle that English law assumes an accused person to be innocent until he is proved guilty, there appears no reason why counsel, as a part of the general machinery of the Court, should not undertake the defence, whatever he may have heard privately about his client. As for giving opinions in the press, it seems really to be a ca: of protecting the public against themselves. Nobody can tell how such opinions may be interpreted by readers or with what deplorable results. There is, or used to be, a mischievous volume called "Every Man His Own Lawyer." Now it is a well founded saying that the man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.