Between the years 1750 and 1775, more than a hundred and fifty young men from the colonies were admitted to one of the four Inns of Court and became educated lawyers with the purpose of entering the profession in their native colonies. How far the presence of such a class of educated lawyers through the colonies contributed to the resentment against the stupidity and injustice of the English colonial policy which brought about the Revolution, cannot be estimated exactly; but certain it is that the preparation of the lawyers who were then in their prime appears to have been Providential interference in behalf of the people of the United States. Never in history has the profession of the law received so great a harvest of profound students of the constitutional principles of government as did our country at this time. Our lawyers signed the Declaration of Independence, served in the Continental Congress, acted as delegates to the Constitutional Convention, and met in the various conventions called by the states to consider the ratification of that great instrument. They not only knew that common law, but they had studied closely the political history of Greece and Rome, and were familiar with the principles of government as set forth by Montesquieu and Adam Smith. It was the American Bar that gave to the people of the United States such lawyers as Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams, James Otis, Samuel Chase, Samuel Adams, Roger Sherman, Oliver Ellsworth, James Wilson, Edmund Randolph and many others not less learned and brilliant, to establish their liberties, frame the limitations of their government and care for the protection of individual rights. The same Bar furnished a little later that lawyer and judge, John Marshall, whose interpretation of the Constitution was as important in its beneficent effect as its original framing. That Bar not only helped largely in constructing the ship of state but it was also most instrumental in launching it on a triumphant and useful course through a century and a quarter. The profound gratitude of succeeding generations owing to such a Bar ought never to be dimmed by partisan or misguided diatribes upon lawyers and judges. CHAPTER II LEGAL ETHICS