THE BENCH AND BAR OF QUEBEC.

Can any member of the Bench or Bar, placing his hand sur sa conscience, after the fashion of speech of our compatriots, say that the legal profession holds the place which it should occupy in the Province of Quebec? No judge, no lawyer can by any possibility have so low an idea of his profession as to answer the preceding question in the affirmative. What then have been the causes productive of this degradation? Is it that with the increase in importance and wealth of the mercantile class, the learned professions must lose weight in society? Is it that the capacity to make and keep money is recognized now-a-days as the most virtuous and useful occupation of man? or is it that within the last fifty years both Bench and Bar have deteriorated, and judges and lawyers at the present day are inferior to their predecessors half a century ago?

There can be no doubt that the increase of commerce and the large fortunes realized thereby have tended to raise socially the position of men engaged in trade. Whilst but very few practitioners at the Bar have realized an independence, and not one a fortune, since the commencement of the century, men are seen in the streets of Montreal every day, who, with but little education, have in the course of a few years, by successful trade or lucky speculations, amassed large fortunes and retired from business, in the flower of their age, to enjoy the delights and intellectual charms of society. To the Quebec lawyer no pleasant prospect of ease and competence in the decline of life presents itself. His life path is montonous, shadeless, arid, dusty, resembling one of those roads traversing some of the departments in France, straight as an arrow and losing itself in the distance, without a solitary tree to break the sameness of its aspect, or to cast its grateful shade over the aching head of the way-worn traveller. The upright practice of his profession brings no reward. His learning, his talents, are of no avail in the race, for his honesty is too crushing a weight for him to live the pace with others unburthened by scruples of conscience. Verily it would seem as if it had been for the last twenty years the aim and desire of our rulers to degrade the Bar, and to abase the Bench. To be a Queen's Counsel, one need not be an honorable man or a distinguished lawyer; to be a judge, it is not requisite to be a jurist.

Let it not be supposed that the picture here presented is overdrawn. What is herein embodied is spoken of openly in our Court-rooms, loudly in our streets; it is a matter of public reproach to the profession and to the Government. It is known to and admitted by ninety out of every hundred of our lawyers and judges, and is regretted by all save those who profit by this monstrous prostitution of patronage.

In no profession does the horror of coming out boldly against abuses affecting itself, exist so strongly as in that of the Bar. Lawyers as a rule are conservative in their ideas after ten years' practice. They have a dislike to washing the soiled linen of the profession in public; they are afraid of exciting the enmity of the judges if they attack the Bench, or any of its members. They are occasionally restrained from giving public utterance to their opinions by feelings of friendship, and they avoid attacking the action of the Government, lest they might perchance prevent their own promotion. All these dislikes, motives, doubts and fears make the Bar exceedingly patient and long suffering in public. But to compensate for this public cowardice, this retiring modesty, so far as society at large is concerned, in private no man is more candid in his opinion of his confrères and the judges, than a Quebec advocate.

Fifty years ago the Bar of Lower Canada stood high; its members moved in the foremost ranks of society, and in the political arena were supreme.

The object of this paper is to examine into the causes of the decline of the legal profession in this Province.

In the year 1849 the Act incorporating the Bar of Lower Canada was passed by the Legislature of the Province of Canada. Divided into sections according to the several districts, members of the Bar were entitled to elect their own officers, and to.manage their own affairs in each section. The principle of universal suffrage was admitted, and the attorney of one day's standing had an eqnal voice in the administration of affairs with the barrister of thirty years' practice. Politicians eager for the interests of their respective parties saw therein opportunities of gaining strength, and consequently the nominees of some four or five gentlemen who met in caucus and decided on the persons who should be the officers of the Bar for the then current year, have been for a long time past duly elected. So high on many occasions has party feeling run, that the candidates for the office of

Bâtonnier, or their friends, have paid the subscriptions of members of the Bar, who had fallen into arrears, to secure the votes. of the defaulters. Is it necessary to say that such a course of proceeding is disgraceful and demoralizing to all parties concerned. One of the consequences of this universal suffrage is that the elections are generally carried by the votes of the younger members, who in very many instances have no idea of their responsibility, and but very little esprit de corps. Canvassed it may be for weeks before hand, they are marshalled by their leaders on the day of election, and vote blindly for the man who is the selected of their party, without caring for or inquiring into his qualifications to be the representative man of the Bar

for a year.

The annual election of Bâtonnier is also a mistake-that officer should be the leading man of the Bar, and should continue in office until he loses his position, when his successor in reputation should be appointed.

Now-a-days, thanks to the errors in the system and the malpractices adverted to, the office of Bâtonnier has been shorn of its prestige, and is open to any one willing to canvass the Bar, and expend fifty pounds in paying arrears.

Another great cause of the decadence of the Lower Canadian Bar has been the laxity displayed in admitting to its ranks men who might perhaps have graced a shoemaker's bench, but who simply disgrace a learned profession. Within the last few years however a change for the better has been effected, and it is now impossible, if the examiners are but true to themselves and their profession, for men to be admitted to practice, without being to a certain extent qualified.

When complaints are brought against members of the Bar for improper or unprofessional conduct, it frequently occurs that the members of the Council, constituting the tribunal before which the charge must be investigated, are approached by the complainant or the defendant, or by friends, seeking to influence them. in favor of one of the parties. It is also rumored that the examiners, on the eve of an examination, have been spoken to by members of the Bar in favor of certain of the candidates. It is to be hoped that such solicitations have not induced any those gentlemen to swerve from the path of duty. Placed in positions of the highest trust, the mere attempt to influence members of the Council, or of the Board of Examiners, is as. heinous an offence as the endeavor to corrupt a judge.

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Of all legislative enactments, decentralization is the one most fraught with fatal effects to the Bar and to the Bench. Life in a country district is destruction to a judge. His faculties rust, his energy declines, his learning is forgotten. In certain cases, without society, in a few years he neglects his duties as a judge, and ends by forgetting his duty as a man and a Christian. In lieu of being an example to his fellow citizens, he becomes a reproach to the community at large. To the lawyer in many of the country districts, the monotonous life he leads exposes him to many temptations, to which alas! he very frequently succumbs-how many men of fine ability have been destroyed owing to casting their lot in a country village. Moreover country practice tends to narrow the ideas, to turn the liberal practitioner into a pettifogger, to transform the advocate into a money-lender at exorbitant interest, and to make him a kindler of family feuds. The highest talent will always gravitate to the great cities, leaving as a rule inferior men in the country. Generally, the judges appointed in the country places are inferior even to those named in the chief districts, and with the happy conjunction of Bench and Bar, not composed of excessively good material, rejoicing in as many different interpretations of our codes, it may almost be said, as there are Districts, can it be wondered at that our law with its mixture of English, French and Civil principles, should by its administration be a veritable olla podrida, with an unsavory smell, affecting most unpleasantly the nostrils of the public?

As to the Bench generally, the most wide spread dissatisfaction exists throughout the Province. It is perfectly true that the corruption which was brought home to certain judges in the State of New York cannot be reproached to their confrères here; but it is not the less true that carelessness, negligence, indifference, and favoritism may with justice be laid to the charge of some of them. Physical defects, absolutely disqualify certain of them from acting as judges, and yet they sit in the most impor

tant cases.

To plead a cause in the Court of Queen's Bench, appeal side, is one of the most mortifying trials to which an advocate can be exposed. Some of the judges pay no attention to the argument. Cases pleaded in one, are judged as a rule in the succeeding term, an interval of three months elapsing. In many of the judgments the most amazing ignorance of the facts and law is apparent. In all it is clear that there has been no proper deli

beration; the Montreal judges being anxious to return to Montreal, when the Court sits in Quebec, and the Quebec judges being animated by the same desire for Quebec, when the Court. is holden at Montreal. Two or three days are often consumed by windy harangues on evidence, and the judges seem to imagine that they must each give all the facts, sift the evidence,. and lay down the rules of law, where even the facts are patent, and a student of two years' standing is acquainted with the law applicable to them. But this, it must be remembered, is a cloak. skilfully put on to deceive the public into the belief that the judges are overwhelmed with work, and that they perform it; whilst the reality is, that in that Court the judges have but little to do, and that little is done in the most slipshod and unprofessional manner.

The hardship to which suitors are exposed by the delay of three months' intervening between the argument and the decision of cases in appeal, is excessive. And there is really no excuse for it save the incapacity of the judges; for with printed factums furnished ere the inscription, containing a full exposé of the facts and the views maintained by each party to the Appeal, nothing should be easier for a judge than to be well up, in both facts and law, when the case is heard. By then listening to the arguments of the Counsel on both sides, it would be easy for them to abbreviate the discussion, and by taking one day's adjournment ere the last day of the term, would enable them easily to dispose on that last mentioned day, of at least eight out of every ten, of the cases argued before them.

And here, par parenthèse, it may be remarked that some learned counsel are decidedly tedious in their arguments; they fritter away too much time in speaking, they are afflicted with a plethora of words, they seem to be in love with the sound of their own voices, and delight themselves at the expense of the Bench and the public. Loquacity in a legal argument is a vice; were the time rule to be introduced it would tend very much to the dispatch of business.

The judges of the Superior Court in Montreal cannot be accused of idleness; they are hardworking, and decide to the best of their ability. There is a want of knowledge however of the principles of Commercial Law apparent on the Bench, which causes certain of its members to be avoided in Mercantile cases.

The main cause of the present lamentable state of affairs is