ment continue upon lines of justice, safety, and conservatism.

So I urge you not to strive exclusively for the pecuniary rewards of your profession, but to look forward to a career of influence and usefulness that shall include your neighborhood, your State, your country, within its beneficent reach. For your example let me commend the ideal of the good lawyer-I do not say the great, but the good lawyer an ideal that has been realized in the life of every substantial city and court, especially in the older neighborhoods; a man of kindly and benignant disposition, friendly alike with his well-to-do and his poorer fellow townsmen, acquainted with their habits and individual history, and with a pretty accurate notion of their opinions and prejudices as well as of their ways and means; genial and sociable, yet dignified and self-contained; of staid and comfortable appearance; in manner alert; in conversation always moderate and respectful; shrewd in his observations; wise, but with perennial humor and love of pleasantry; as a citizen always concerned and active in the interests of his town, his State, and his country; not an agitator, nor a perpetual fault-finder, nor giving out the intimation that he is better or wiser than others; but ready to confer, to adjust, to agree, to get the best possible, if not the utmost that is desirable; to him the people turn in local emergencies for guidance and counsel on their public affairs, even partizanship fearing not to trust to his honor and wisdom; so free from all cause of offense that there is no tongue to lay a word against his pure integrity-too dignified and respectful to tempt familiarity; too genial and generous to provoke envy or jealousy; revered by his brethren of the bar; helpful and kindly to the young; in manners suave and polite, with a fine courtliness of the old flavor-what Clarendon described in John Hampden as "a flowing courtesy toward all men'; successful, of course, in his practise, but caring less for its profits than for the forensic and intellectual delight which the study and practise of the law bring to him; he knows much of the old "learning in the law"-can tell you of fines, of double

vouchers and recoveries, of the "Rule in Shelly's case"tho he keeps all these things in mind as collectors treasure their antiques and curios, more as objects of art and historical interest than of practical utility. His mind is grounded upon the broad and deep principles of jurisprudence rather than upon "wise saws and modern instances"; but over all is reflected the illumination of a strong common sense and a refined tactfulness. To his clients he is an object of confidence and real affection; the secure depository of family secrets, and the safe guide and counselor in trouble and difficulty; composing, not stirring up strife, but when in actual trial, strong, aggressive, confident; never quibbling or dissembling; respectful to witnesses, to jurors, and to judge, as well as to his adversary.

In the judgment and feeling of the community there is something of the venerable and illustrious attached to his name; not for his learning in the law, nor for his success as an advocate, nor for his usefulness to his fellow citizens as a counselor and guide, but for the benignant influence of his whole life and character; and when he dies to every mind there comes a suggestion of the epitaph that shall most fittingly preserve the estimate which the people have formed of him-"The just man and the counselor."

PEACE*

BY JOHN BRIGHT

[Delivered at Edinburgh, before the Conference of the Peace Society, October 13, 1853.]

It is a great advantage in this country, I think, that we have no want of ample criticism. Whatever we may have said yesterday and to-day will form the subject of criticism, not of the most friendly character, in very many

From John Bright's Public Addresses. By kind permission of the pub lishers, Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

newspapers throughout the United Kingdom, I recollect when we met in Manchester, that papers disposed to be friendly, warned us as to the course we were taking, and that the time was ill-chosen for a peace meeting. It was said that the people were excited against France, and were alarmed at their almost total defenselessness, and that there was no use in endeavoring to place before them the facts which the peace men offered to their audience. The result showed that they were mistaken, for you will recollect that, while up to that meeting there was a constantly swelling tide of alarm and hostility with regard to France, from the day the conference was held there was a gradual receding of the tide, that the alarm and apprehension rapidly diminished, and that by the time the House of Commons met in February we were willing to receive from Lord John Russell and other statesmen the most positive assurances that France was not increasing her force, and that there was not the slightest reason to believe that the Government of France entertained anything but the most friendly feeling toward the Government of this country.

The right time to oppose the errors and prejudices of the people never comes to the eyes of those writers in the public press who pander to these prejudices. They say, we must not do so and so, we shall embarrass the Government. But rumor says the Government has been pretty well embarrassed already. They say that we shall complicate the question if we interfere; but it can not well be more complicated than it is; for hardly anybody but the peace men can tell how to unravel it. Next, they tell us that we shall impair the harmony of opinion which there appears to be in the country, from the fact of there having been three or four insignificant meetings, by which the Government is to be impelled to more active and energetic measures. Now, what is it that we really wish? We wish to protest against the maintenance of great armaments in time of peace; we wish to protest against the spirit which is not only willing but eager for war; and we wish to protest, with all the emphasis of which we are capable, against the mischievous policy pursued so long by this country, of interfering with the

internal affairs of other countries, and thereby leading to disputes, and often to disastrous wars.

I mentioned last night what it was we were annually spending on our armaments. Admiral Napier says that the Honorable Member for the West Riding, who can do everything, had persuaded a feeble government to reduce the armaments of this country to "nothing." What is "nothing" in the admiral's estimation? Fifteen millions a year! Was all that money thrown away? We have it in the estimates, we pay it out of the taxes-it is appropriated by Parliament, it sustains your dockyards, pays the wages of your men, and maintains your ships. Fifteen millions sterling paid in the very year when the admiral says that my honorable friend reduced the armaments of the country to nothing! But take the sums which we spent for the past year in warlike preparations-seventeen millions, and the interest on debt caused by war-twenty-eight millions sterling; and it amounts to 45,000,000.

What are our whole exports? Even this year, far the largest year of exports we have ever known, they may amount to 80,000,000. Well, then, plant some one at the mouth of every port and harbor in the United Kingdom, and let him take every alternate ship that leaves your rivers and your harbors with all its valuable cargo on board, and let him carry it off as for tribute, and it will not amount to the cost that you pay every year for a war, that fifty years ago was justified as much as it is attempted to justify this impending war, and for the preparations which you now make after a peace which has lasted for thirty-eight years.

Every twenty years—in a nation's life nothing, in a person's life something-every twenty years a thousand millions sterling out of the industry of the hard-working people of this United Kingdom, are extorted, appropriated, and expended to pay for that unnecessary and unjust war, and for the absurd and ruinous expenditure which you now incur. A thousand millions every twenty years! Apply a thousand millions, not every twenty years, but for one period of twenty years, to objects of good in this country,

and it would be rendered more like a paradise than anything that history records of man's condition, and would make so great a change in these islands, that a man having seen them as they are now, and seeing them as they might then be, would not recognize them as the same country, nor our population as the same people. But what do we expend all this for? Bear in mind that admirals, and generals, and statesmen defended that great war, and that your newspapers, with scarcely an exception, were in favor of it, and denounced and ostracized hundreds of good men who dared, as we dare now, to denounce the spirit which would again lead this country into war. We went to war that France should not choose its own government; the grand conclusion was that no Bonaparte should sit on the throne of France; yet France has all along been changing its government from that time to this, and we now find ourselves with a Bonaparte on the throne of France, and, for anything I know to the contrary, likely to remain there for a good while. So far, therefore, for the calculations of our forefathers, and for the results of that enormous expenditure which they have saddled upon us.

We object to these great armaments as provoking a war spirit. I should like to ask, what was the object of the Chobham exhibition? There were special trains at the disposal of members of Parliament, to go down to Chobham the one day, and to Spithead the other. What was the use of our pointing to the President of the French Republic two years ago, who is the emperor now, and saying that he was spending his time at playing at soldiers in his great camp at Satory, and in making great circuses for the amusement of his soldiers? We too, are getting into the way of playing at soldiers, and camps, and fleets, and the object of this is to raise up in the spirit of the people a feeling antagonistic to peace, and to render the people— the deluded, hard-working, toiling people-satisfied with the extortion of 17,000,000 annually, when, upon the very principles of the men who take it, it might be demonstrated that one-half of the money would be amply sufficient for the purpose to which it is devoted. What ob