The Green Bag

PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT $4.00 PER ANNUM.

SINGLE NUMBERS 50 CENTS.

Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, S. R. WRIGHTINGTON, 31 State Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of in terest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetiae, anecdotes, etc.

WITH the approach of the summer vaca tions, and the gatherings of lawyers at the annual meetings of their associations, the profession grows introspective and scores its own faults or sings them down in praises as the mood of the orator dictates. In this number the ethics of the profession are touched upon from many points of view, and we trust that none will prove without, interest or instruction. Although the man of solid business ability may have overshadowed the advocate in the law as well as in politics in the great commercial development of recent years, the fact remains that when the evils bred of prosperity have to be rooted out, the man who has been trained in the contests of the courts is the one to be called to public duty. Critics of our profession have recently been shocked by the revelations of the so-called venality of the Philadelphia Bar when Mayor Weaver had to seek in another city the legal advice which the leaders of his profession at home were bound by retainers to refuse. Whatever may be said of the practice of accepting retainers merely to preserve neu trality, one can hardly despair of the public spirit of the profession when one recalls that the cleansing of Philadelphia, as of St. Louis, has been the work of a lawyer. The concep tion of devotion to a client which is inbred in a lawyer can hardly fail to affect his atti tude towards all other phases of the life of which he is a part, but it is this same spirit that makes him the fearless and devoted champion of the public, when once he con ceives the call to public service as a trust imposed by the greater client. Mr. Bonaparte has been best known as a reformer, yet his work has always been that of an advocate. He has been most recently-

conspicuous as the special counsel appointed to prosecute the cases against the delinquent postal officials. A biography by an impar tial student of a later generation may inspire greater confidence in the correctness of its estimate than an appreciation by a contem porary; but in view of the inevitable limita tions of a sketch of a man while in the midst of his activities, it is pleasant to find now and then in such a publication the ring of personal and intimate friendship, which at least must know and understand the inner life that distinguishes a man from his fel lows. Mr. Reynolds was born in Baltimore in 1842, and admitted to the Bar of that city in 1863. Though he has published two small law books, ' 'A Digest of the Law of Evidence as Established in the United States," which was an adaptation of Mr. Justice Stephen's well-known work to our law, and "The Theory of the Law of Evidence" which, though origi nally published in 1883, is still a text-book in some of our leading law schools, Mr. Rey nolds has been devoted to active practice, and only because of his relations to the subject of his sketch, which he so frankly explains, did he consent to take time from the busy ending of a trial term to write for us his recollections of the legal career of Mr. Bonaparte. THE nation now listens eagerly for the word of Governor Folk, and his professional breth ren are glad that he does not forget their needs amid his wider duties. We are per mitted to publish his address delivered in June before the Kentucky State Bar Associ ation. Those who read the sketch of his legal work in our February number, in which his portrait was our frontispiece, will appreciate, perhaps, his allusions to the difficulties of his task in St. Louis. No one, however, who has not experienced the personal pressure to which a public prosecutor is subjected, can fully un derstand the inner meaning of his words or the real greatness of his example.