inquiries; not for want of capacity in its members, than whom there are not in the profession men of higher honour and standing, but from the weakness inherent to so informal a tribunal. It is scarcely possible to imagine cases which require greater care and delicacy of treatment than those which involve so penal a conclusion as disbarment; and every possible assistance should be given both to the benchers and to the barristers, whose conduct is in question before them, for the discovery of truth and the vindication of honour. It is obvious that from want of due authority as a constituted Court, there arose the confusion which ended in the action so full of public scandal to the Society of the Middle Temple.* Complaint has been further made in the public papers by Mr. Digby Seymour, that in his case, of fifteen meetings held by the benchers, in no single instance was the parliament composed a second time of the same members as any previous parliament, and that the numbers attending varied from a maximum of eighteen to a minimum of seven, and that only two members attended all the meetings. Without expressing any opinion on the merits of this case, or whether Mr. Seymour was justified in making this objection, I cannot but think that in an inquiry of so important a nature, such a course, and it has not been contradicted, was very far from being calculated to ensure a proper consideration of the case, either for or against the accused; but it would seem to be inevitable in a body so numerous as the benchers of the Middle Temple, many of whom are barristers in the greatest practice, and who must find great difficulty in attending an inquiry of such length.

Then, again, the charges which were investigated by the benchers were in respect of matters which occurred six, seven, and eight years before the inquiry; they were matters which were known to many members of his circuit, and were generally bruited about in the profession years before

* This defect was pointed out in the Report of the Royal Commission, and a remedy suggested; no action, however, was taken upon it.

the inquiry took place, and before Mr. Seymour had been raised to the dignity of a Queen's Counsel. I am far from saying that time should be a bar to all charges whatever against a counsel; but where there has been no good cause for the long continued abstinence of the prosecutors, it is matter of serious consideration whether, having regard to the difficulty of proof and disproof, such charges should be entertained. In such cases accusations are unjustly made against the benchers that they take no action till the accused is in position high enough to be an object of professional jealousy-accusations, the groundlessness of which can only be known to the Bar. In Mr. Seymour's case, if the inquiry had been made soon after the commission of the alleged acts, there would have been better opportunities of ascertaining the truth of the matters, and the benchers would have been spared the pain of censuring the conduct of one whom the Government had so recently thought proper to make a Queen's Counsel. It is probable that the delay which took place in this case was owing to the imperfect means which the benchers of his Inn have of ascertaining any information respecting the professional conduct of their members, particularly of those in the junior ranks of the profession; an objection which arises from the constitution of such a tribunal.

Yet another defect in the means which the benchers have of maintaining discipline among their members is brought to light by the difficulty which they appear to labour under of giving publicity to their discussions. In Mr. Seymour's case, the judgment, which was the result of their investigation, was communicated to the public in a document which was screened in the Hall. The document contained no name to connect it with the particular case, and it was only by inference that it could be so understood. Mr. Edwin James's case, again, the nature of the charges which led to his expulsion from the profession were long withheld from the public, and it was not till some months

In

after that the public were favoured, through the pages of the Law Review, with the true nature of the charges in respect to which Mr. James was condemned. In the meantime, Mr. James had been able to present himself to a public and a profession on the other side of the Atlantic, as if he had been compelled to leave this country on account of pecuniary difficulties only. It is true that the profession here were well aware of what had been the nature of his offences, but not so the general public. It would certainly seem that in cases of disbarment the reasons for it should be made public, for the sake both of the Bar and the public, to justify the one and to protect the other.

Besides the tribunal of the benchers which has thus been described, there is for barristers who join a circuit another quasi tribunal in the Bar mess of the circuit. The admission to the mess is by ballot; and, if the candidate is blackballed, the practice is to appoint a committee to inquire into his antecedents, and to report the same to the mess, upon which the admission is again discussed. The same tribunal asserts the right to inquire into the professional and moral conduct of its members; and, after a report from a committee of inquiry, a discussion takes place, which ends either in censure or expulsion from the mess. It is well understood, however, that the Bar mess has authority only so far as extends to expulsion from its own society, and that it cannot prevent the barrister from practising in the Courts on circuit. Authorities differ upon the question whether it has the right to forbid its members to hold briefs with the expelled member. Moreover, there is not any recognised practice or means of communicating with, or transmitting information to, the benchers of the Inn to which he may belong. The discussions before the mess upon these subjects take place after dinner, and as might be expected, are not of a nature to insure uniformity of practice or much respect for decisions arrived at. Breaches of etiquette often pass unnoticed. It has, however, occurred that the

circuit mess has properly expelled a member for acts against public morals where no action has followed from the Inns of Court, and where it must be presumed either that the benchers do not consider such acts as within their cognizance or that they have no means of receiving information upon matters even of public notoriety.

The various sessions exercise the same kind of limited control over members of their mess.

The penalty which the circuit and sessions mess thus hold out to their members is insufficient; for though men of high feeling generally keep themselves much within the rules of etiquette, and are sometimes over-punctilious in the observance of supposed rules which have no real existence, to men who are without these feelings, the knowledge that nothing more can result than the loss of the Bar society, takes off from the efficacy of the penalty; and to the men who are excluded or who have never been admitted, but who are still free to practise on circuit, there is wanting a powerful check upon malpractices, the fear of forfeiting the good-will and opinion of their fellows.

The offences which are the subject of inquiry before these tribunals, both of benchers and circuit mess, are, as I have already pointed out, of two kinds :-firstly, dishonest conduct, professional or otherwise; secondly, breaches of professional etiquette, the distinction being this, that there is nothing necessarily in itself dishonest or improper in the act which comes under the latter head, but it is forbidden by rule of the profession, because the interest of the Bar or the public so requires; not but that some breaches of etiquette are dishonest-such as the making a secret agreement with the attorney to work off a debt-but the dishonesty is in the secrecy, in pretending to keep to the rules of etiquette, and in secretly breaking them. It will be readily understood, from this division, that it may be neither possible nor desirable to lay down any strict rules as to what particular acts of dis

honesty should render a barrister liable to disbarment; the discretion is and must be left with the governing body. It would, however, be well if some understanding were come to as to what acts which border on dishonesty, such as insolvency, and also acts of the nature I have before alluded to, should be considered within the category; not, of course, as a matter of warning, but rather for the guidance of those who have charge of the discipline of the Bar. As there is no record kept by the benchers (open to the public at least) of the cases which have come before them, and in which they have exercised their discretion of disbarring, and as no publicity is given to their decisions, no precedents can be appealed to on the subject, except in the few cases where attempts have been made to get the interference of the Queen's Bench by mandamus. In Boorman's case, a barrister of one of the Temples was expelled the house, and his chamber seized for non-payment of his commons; a course which, I conceive, would hardly be followed

now.

With regard to breaches of etiquette, however, I cannot but think the question is very different. It being conceded that the etiquette of the Bar depends upon the rules which custom or expediency requires should be maintained, but the breach or non-performance of which is not in itself matter of dishonesty, it follows, almost as a matter of course, that they should be accurately defined and laid down for the guidance of all, but especially of men just commencing their career. As I have already pointed out, such is not the case; they remain to this day the unwritten laws of the profession, handed down from generation to generation, and altering materially with the custom, practice, and convenience of the Bar. There are certain leading rules of etiquette which have, practice, become well known and defined, but many others which are ill-defined and ill-kept; some are falling into neglect, others gradually rising into practice.

from long

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