Fifty and more years ago, disloyalty toward one another among members of the bar was almost unknown; there was largely the same feeling of fealty that now prevails among physicians; an allegiance that counted for something to the distressed.

In recent years we find a faithlessness, an inconstancy that leads to a treacherous condition wherein one member of the bar goes often out of his way to injure his neighbor and brother. It is not in his teachings, it is not revealed in his education or practice, but all the same that salutary co-operation and amiability which distinguishes the true gentleman from the low-born is rampant and the public knows it. This result is disastrous to the clean practice of law.

The old-time courtesy, the consummate friendliness, the dignified majesty of legitimate practitioners has largely vanished and in place we have the cheap and bombastic commercialized business that has so largely changed the sublimity of the urbane teacher of the old school into the apostate who uses the term "lawyer" as a mask in which to dissemble.

The knights-errant of a half century ago redressed wrongs and defended the defenceless; not for the sake of lucre or the selfish cravings of renown, but for the pleasure of complying with the oath they had taken. Look over the larger cities of today and find the great number

of so-called attorneys who take cases "on spec and to charge nothin' at all for costs." Dead-ringers for Sydney Carton's "Jackal to Stryver, the braggart" in "The Tale of Two Cities."

The legal profession is under constant public observation. Its doings are talked about by the public and commented on by the press. Lawyers are held responsible for the acts of corporations and properly so because the corporations act under legal advice. The professional ethics of the one generally correspond with the business ethics of the other; if one is bad, both are bad; if one is good, both are good-otherwise lawyer and client separate after a few years. In other words, in the long run the lawyer can be judged by his clients; the clients by their lawyer.

Butler Cosgrave in his "Doom's Day" makes one of his stage characters say that "a witch will sail in a sieve, but the devil would not venture aboard a collection lawyer's conscience." Ben Johnson's epitaph on Justice Randall condenses in a couplet the popular estimate of the profession:

"God works wonders now and then,
Here lyes a lawyer, an honest man."

The profession of the law is changing. In the days of Emerson it was true as he said, “it is a profession which never admits a fool.” Today our law schools are grinding out a society of men bred up from their youth to prove black white or vice versa, according as they are paid. The collection attorney of today is practically devoid of feelings as affecting suffering; his heavenly contemplation of Justice and Equity is a dream of fat contentions and flowing fees.

The law is changing along with doctrines and institutions. Each generation meets new needs and has broader views of social equalities. Law is as variable as man himself. Even morals are changing as the standard of ethics and consciences vary. The factors or influences which control the practitioner of today are not those of reconciliation, but of money. Law loses its sanctions of Justice when seen through the eyes of modern times. Unless we can get back to a clearer understanding of ethics as applied to the profession we may look forward to majority rule which is but another name for the mob,-a heterogeneous social money mad group with no final fine conceptions of conservative honorable practice. Thought atmosphere will be replaced by a generalized fluctuation of the law of human conduct. Convenience and utility will replace the prohibitions of the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. Ideals of Justice and the ends of law will disappear if authority is absent and the old-time application of rules and regula