These are arguments which are more plausible than sound: they are imposing, but not solid. The question really is, what is best for the people at large,--what will be most likely to secure them a high-minded, honorable Bar? It is all-important that the profession should have and deserve that character. A horde of pettifogging, barratrous, custom-seeking, money-making lawyers, is one of the greatest curses with which any state or community can be visited. What more likely to bring about such a result than a decision, which strips the Bar of its character as a learned profession, on the principle avowed by one court, that it is now a calling as much as any mechanical art,--or by another, in effect, that the order of things is in the present condition of society reversed, and clients are really the _patrons_ of their attorneys? A more plausible reason is that the client is safer from the oppression of extortionate counsel, by putting both upon the equal footing of legal right and obligation. It would appear, however, better that the parties should make an express agreement before or at the time of retainer, or that the amount should be left to the justice of the counsel, and the honor and liberality of the client subsequently. Every judge, who has ever tried a case between attorney and client, has felt the delicacy and difficulty of saying what is the measure of just compensation. It is to be graduated, according to a high legal authority, with a proper reference to the nature of the business performed by the counsel for the client, and his standing in his profession for learning and skill; whereby the value of his services is enhanced to his client.[44] Is then the standing and character of the counsel in his profession for learning and skill to be a question of fact to be determined by the jury in every case in which a lawyer sues his client? How determined, if necessary to the decision of the question? Not surely by the crude opinions of the jurors; but by testimony of members of the same profession on the subject. This never is done; it would be a very difficult as well as delicate question for a lawyer to pronounce upon the standing of a professional brother. The most that can be done is to call gentlemen to say what they would have considered reasonable for such services, had they been performed by themselves. Some may testify up to a very high point, from an excusable, though foolish vanity; others to a very low one, from the despicable, desire of attracting custom to a cheap shop.[45] No one can ever have seen such a cause tried without feeling, that the Bar had received by it an impulse downwards in the eyes of bystanders and the community. The case is thrown into the jury-box, to be decided at haphazard, according as the twelve men may chance to think or feel. He, who narrowly watches such controversies, cannot fail to see that the right of a counsel to enforce his claim for legal compensation is far from being calculated to