The liberality which for the last five and-twenty years has marked the distribution of 'silk' to rising members of the bar, and the ease with which all fairly successful advocates may obtain the rank of Queen's Counsel, enable lawyers of the present generation to smile at a rule which defined a man's professional position by the color of his bag, instead of the texture of his gown; but in times when 'silk' was given to comparatively few members of the bar, and when that distinction was most unfairly withheld from the brightest ornaments of their profession, if their political opinions displeased the 'party in power,' it was natural and reasonable in the bar to institute for themselves an 'order of merit'--to which deserving candidates could obtain admission without reference to the prejudices of a Chancellor or the whims of a clique. At present the sovereign's counsel learned in the law constitute a distinct order of the profession; but until the reign of William IV. they were merely a handful of court favorites. In most cases they were sound lawyers in full employment; but the immediate cause of their elevation was almost always some political consideration--and sometimes the lucky wearer of a silk gown had won the right to put K.C. or Q.C. after his name by base compliance with ministerial power. That our earlier King's Counsel were not created from the purest motives or for the most honorable purposes will be readily admitted by the reader who reflects that 'silk gowns' are a legal species, for which the nation is indebted to the Stuarts. For all practical purposes Francis Bacon was a Q.C. during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He enjoyed peculiar and distinctive _status_ as a barrister, being consulted on legal matters by the Queen, although he held no place that in familiar parlance would entitle him to rank with her Crown Lawyers; and his biographers have agreed to call him Elizabeth's counsellor learned in the law. But a Q.C. holding his office by patent--that is to say, a Q.C. as that term is understood at the present time--Francis Bacon never was. On the accession, however, of James I., he received his formal appointment of K.C., the new monarch having seen fit to recognise the lawyer's claim to be regarded as a 'special counsel,' or 'learned counsel extraordinary.' Another barrister of the same period who obtained the same distinction was Sir Henry Montague, who, in a patent granted in 1608 to the two Temples, is styled "one of our counsel learned in the law." Thus planted, the institution of monarch's special counsel was for many generations a tree of slow growth. Until George III.'s reign the number of monarch's counsel, living and practising at the same time, was never large; and throughout the long period of that king's rule the fraternity of K.C. never assumed them agnitude and character of a professional order. It is uncertain what was the greatest number of contemporaneous