The Seven Lamps of Advocacy

The English Bar is a society of advocates, though, as Blackstone tells us, we generally call them counsel. The Scots retain the name in their Faculty of Advocates. The word must be insisted upon for its ancientry and meaning. The order of advocates is, in D’Aguesseau’s famous phrase, “as noble as virtue.” Far back in the Capitularies of Charlemagne it was ordained of the profession of advocates “that nobody should be admitted therein but men mild, pacific, fearing God, and loving justice, upon pain of elimination.” So may it continue, world without end.