The greater part of my letters from America have hitherto been addressed to our late brother John. Since we have now to deplore that he is removed {168} from all correspondence with us, I shall direct this to you. There are many particulars in the condition of this country, that must appear surprising to any one who has not seen a community in its infantine state. We have here lawyers who have not been regularly educated in the knowledge of their profession. Blackstone’s Commentaries are considered the great medium of instruction. The young man who has carefully read these, and who has for a short time wrote for a practising attorney, is admitted to the bar. It is said that even the latter part of this preparatory course has, in many instances, been dispensed with. The occupation of barrister and attorney is usually performed by the same practitioner.[103] He transacts with clients, writes and pleads before courts of justice, or before a squire, as occasion requires. If we may judge from grammatical and orthographic inaccuracies, we must be apt to believe that, although some of them may be esteemed as lawyers, they are not good English scholars. Lawyers here, as elsewhere, take their stand as being of the first class in society, and a great proportion of our back-wood legislators, in State assemblies, and in the general government, are elected from among this body of gentlemen. Such are many of the counsellors who grow up in Transmontane-America; but it would be unfair to omit noticing that men of a very different character arise here.--I shall only mention one example in Henry Clay, a Kentuckian lawyer, who has for eight years made a distinguished figure in the conspicuous situation of speaker of the House of Representatives at the capital. Mr. Clay was commissioner on the part of the United States, at the treaty of Ghent, in 1814, and plenipotentiary for commercial arrangements with Great Britain in 1815. The profession {169} also owes much of its respectability to the ingress of young gentlemen of liberal education from the Atlantic States, who make diligent research in the history of cases, and whose libraries are usually stored with law authorities, and the best models of forensic eloquence in the English language. The medical men here are all _doctors_, nor is the inferior degree, surgeon, at all recognised. In new settlements, many practise on life and limb who have not obtained the diploma of any medical school. The smallness of their laboratories renders it probable, that the universal medicine is included. Here, too, there are honoured exceptions; and the medical colleges instituted at Cincinnati and Lexington may soon furnish more accomplished practitioners.