312 MORALS OF THE DIFFERENT PROFESSIONS. [Part V.

intercourse of life ; they extend to that inward principle of rec-titude, which sets a man above those professional misrepresenta-tions, and which leads him to scorn those advantages, which arethe choicest aliment of the crafty and the unprincipled. It isin vain to contend, that the nature of the calling demands aresort to artifice and cunning, and that, therefore, no man cansucceed without them. If this were true, it ought to deterevery man from entering into a profession, the principles ofwhich were so contrary to every dictate of truth and honor.Cunning is the wisdom of the vulgar and the unprincipled ; itsvery essence is made up of meanness, concealment, and disguise.

There is surely nothing in law itself, which naturally leads itsprofessors to substitute cunning for wisdom. Far otherwise.“ In contemplating law as a universal principle,” says one ofour own jurists, “ which all beings animate and inanimate obey,the mind is filled with the magnitude of the conception. Not onlycreatures, but the Creator himself acknowledges a rule of con-duct. Those spirits who surround his throne, and are swift todo his will, and all inferior orders of rational beings, whether insociety or solitude, recognise the will of their creator as the lawof their existence. In the revolution of the heavenly bodies, inthe succession of seasons, and indeed throughout the wholecourse of nature, the footsteps of a Divine Lawgiver, are noless manifest than among the highest intelligent spirits.” # Indeedit may be said with the utmost truth, that the general law of thiscountry is a noble superstructure, raised upon the everlastingfoundation of truth and reason ; calculated by its beauty to excitethe admiration, and by its strength to be the defence of thepeople. Whoever will look with an eye of understanding intoour courts of justice, will behold the utmost that the combinedlabor and wisdom of man can perform ; he will find the propertyof his countrymen, however diversified, arranged into its simpleparts, distributed according to its true nature, and secured to itsrightful proprietor. He will perceive the anxiety of the ancientBritish lawgivers, whose labors have descended to us, and ofour own legislatures and courts of justice, to adapt the laws to

* The Hon. P. O. Thacher’s Address before the Bar of Suffolk, Massachu-setts 1831. p. 16.