forfeiture, he was entitled to the benefit of a full judicial investigation.' S. F. D. that 1 In a speech delivered by Mr. Adams, at the late session of congress, gentleman expresses the opinion that the proper inquiry in regard to this subject is, which party struck the first blow? which was guilty of the first unjustifiable act? The distinguished gentleman assumes that the steamer was a government vessel, or that the government was liable for the acts of those who were on board of her. But was this the case? She was not a government vessel. Nor, as it would seem, was the government responsible for her. The question quoted from Moliere, que diable faites vous au cet Galere? might very well be put to the owner of the steamer, and it might be difficult for him to answer it in such a manner as to substantiate his claim to indemnity; but because his conduct was unjustifiable, it does not follow that the British government may properly resort to this mode of procedure against individuals who have violated the laws of the United States, nor that Great Britain may violate the territory of the United States. If the crew of the steamer might have been regarded as a part of the belligerent force retiring into the United States, the boundary of a neutral, no right to go in quest of her results from the doctrine which we have stated from the publicists, unless the government of the neutral permitted the steamer to engage in unlawful enterprises; but this does not appear. If it could be shown that the owner of the steamer had violated the laws of the United States, the courts of the United States would have provided a remedy. ART. V.-THE BARRISTER. [The following is reprinted from a little volume of Essays by Mr. Basil Montagu, a venerable member of the English bar, who has illustrated his long professional career, by various legal works, by the cultivation of letters, and by a blameless life. This character of the barrister, says the author, is "after the manner of Fuller."] 1. Before he engages as a student he considers his health. whether it will enable him to encounter sedentary confinement, continued intensity of thought, the exertion of fong and frequent pleadings in hot and crowded courts, and the anxiety ever attendant upon the consciousness of being intrusted with the happiness of others. 2. He considers the fitness of his intellect for the profession of the law, whether he has invention to find, judgment to examine, memory to retain, and a prompt and ready delivery. He is mindful that a man may be miserable in the study of the law, who might have been serviceable to his country at the spade or the plough. 3. He duly considers his motive for engaging in the profession. It is not fame, but honorable fame; it is not wealth, but wealth worthily obtained; it is not power, but power gained fairly and exercised virtuously; it is not the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees, but the heavenly contemplation of justice and equity. His plans will not be subservient to considerations of rewards, estate, or title; these will not have precedence in his thoughts, to govern his actions, but follow in the train of his duty. He enters his profession, mindful of the admonition of lord Bacon. "We enter into a desire of knowledge, sometimes from a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain our minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; sometimes to enable us to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of our gift of reason, for the benefit and use of man:- as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the creator, and the relief of man's estate." 4. He is careful of his health. He remembers that the foundation of happiness in life, and of excellence in his profession, is health of body. His rule, therefore, is ne quid nimis. He is warned by an eminent lawyer, who said, will not sit np more than three nights together for any attorney in London." He remembers the admonition of lord Bacon, "Although the world to a christian travelling to the land of promise be, as it were, a wilderness, yet that our shoes and vestments be less worn away while we sojourn in the wilderness, is to be esteemed a gift coming from divine goodness." 5. He is industrious. "I have two tutors, said king Edward to Cardan, diligence and moderation." So our student will be on his guard against indolence, fickleness, irresolution, immoderate love of amusements, and against every ensnaring and dissipated habit; the natural effect of an overgrown, wealthy, and luxurious capital. 6. He stores his mind with the general principles of law. The tutor to king Edward the sixth said, "I will not debase my royal pupil's mind with the nauseated and low crumbs of a pedant, but will ennoble it with the free and high maxims of a statesman. The stream must fail which is not supplied from the fountain." Lord Bacon, in his entrance on philosophy, says: "And because the partitions of sciences are not like several lines that meet in one angle; but rather like branches of trees, that meet in one stem; which stem, for some dimension and space, is entire and continued, before it break and part itself into arms and boughs; therefore the nature of the subject requires, before we pursue the parts of the former distribution, to erect and constitute one universal science, which may be the mother of the rest; and that in the progress of sciences, a portion as it were, of the common highway may be kept, before we come where the ways part and divide themselves." " And in his entrance on the science of human nature, he thus speaks to the same effect: "Now let us come to that knowledge, whereunto the ancient oracle di Our lawyer, therefore, studies the law of laws-"justitia universalis," the fixed poles, which, however the law may turn, stand immovable. He remembers the maxim, 7. He studies human nature. "Pour diriger les mouvemens de la poupée humaine, il faudroit connoître les fils qui la meuvent." He remembers the words of lord Bolingbroke: "I might instance, in other professions, the obligations men lie under of applying themselves to certain parts of history, and I can hardly forbear doing it in that of the law; in its nature the noblest and most beneficial to mankind, in its abuse and abasement the most sordid and the most pernicious. A lawyer now is nothing more, I speak of ninety-nine in a hundred at least, to use some of Tully's words, nisi leguleius quidam cautus, et acutus, præco actionum, cantor formularum, auceps syllabarum but there have been lawyers that were orators, philosophers, historians: there have been Bacons and Clarendons. There will be none such any more, till in some better age, true ambition or the love of fame prevails over avarice; and till men find leisure and encouragement to prepare themselves for the exercise of this profession, by climbing up to the 'vantage ground' of science, instead of grovelling all their lives below, in a mean but gainful application to all the little arts of chicane. Till this happen, recteth us, which is the knowledge of ourselves: which deserves the more accurate handling by how much it toucheth us more nearly. This knowledge is to man the end and term of knowledges; but of nature herself, a portion only. And generally let this be a rule, that all divisions of knowledges be so accepted and applied, as that they may rather design forth and distinguish sciences into parts, than cut and pull them asunder into pieces; that so the continuance and entireness of knowledges may ever be preserved. For the contrary practice hath made particular sciences to become barren, shallow, and erroneous, while they have not been nourished, maintained, and rectified, from the common fountain and nursery. So we see Cicero the orator complained of Socrates, and his school, that he was the first that separated philosophy and rhetoric; whereupon rhetoric became a verbal, and empty art." the profession of the law will scarce deserve to be ranked among the learned professions: and whenever it happens, one of the vantage grounds to which men must climb, is metaphysical, and the other historical knowledge. They must pry into the secret recesses of the human heart, and become well acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover the abstract reason of all laws: and they must trace the laws of particular states, especially of their own, from the first rough sketches to the more perfect draughts; from the first causes or occasions that produced them, through all the effects, good and bad, that they produced." 8. He studies the law which he is to practise, with due consideration of the law of other countries, and, that he may practise with effect, he is not unmindful that eloquence is to knowledge what colors are to a picture. 9. He is careful of his times of recreation. - He never forgets the old adage, "Tell me your amusements and I will tell you what you are." He knows that the employment of times of recreation, is susceptible of every variety between the lowest sensuality and the highest intellectual pleasures; between "the silence of Archimedes in his study, and the stillness of a sow at her wash;" between the drunken revelries of Jefferies, and the calm occupations of sir Matthew Hale. "When a magistrate," says the author of the life of the chancellor de l'Hôpital, "returned to his family, he had little temptation to stir again from home. His library was necessarily his sole resource; his books his only company. To this austere and retired life, we owe the chancellor de l'Hôpital, the president de Thou, Pasquier, Loisel, the Pithous, and many other ornaments of the magistracy." 10. When his name is up, his industry is not down. — He does not think it virtuous to plead by his credit, but by his |