It is, in fact, still a moot point, and, we suppose, always will be, what lengths an advocate may go to, consistently with truth and honour, in pleading the cause of a client whom he knows to be guilty. The conduct of Charles Phillipps, in defending Courvoisier, has always been condemned. Courvoisier did not confess his guilt to his counsel, but admitted to him that he had made away with some plate from Lord William Russell’s house immediately after the murder. This was damning evidence, but the communication was made by the prisoner not to admit his guilt, but merely to prepare his counsel to deal with the evidence. But Phillipps made a remark in his speech which the Bar considered as unjustifiable. He said: ’Supposing him to be guilty of the murder, which is known to God Almighty alone, I hope, for the sake of his eternal soul, he is innocent.’ These words were not only in bad taste, but conveyed a positive falsehood. Counsel’s part is to lay before the jury possibilities, and not his own opinion of the prisoner’s guilt or innocence; and a strange feature of the etiquette of the Bar is that if counsel is prepared to throw up his brief because he sees his cause to be bad, yet he is bound, after accepting the retainer, to continue defending the case if his client insists on his doing so. He may then be compelled to go on arguing on behalf of a man whom he knows to be a thorough scoundrel. Barristers were first appointed by Edward I. about 1291, but there is an earlier mention of professional advocates in England, who were of various ranks, as King’s or Queen’s Counsel, Serjeants, etc. At more recent dates we read of utter or outer and inner barristers; these terms appear to have been derived from local arrangements in the halls of the Inns of Court. In the public meetings held in these halls, the benchers and readers—superior to barristers—occupying the daïs, which was separated by a bar, some of the barristers who had attained a certain standing were called from the body of the hall to the bar—that is, to the first place outside the bar—for the purpose of arguing doubtful questions and cases, whence they probably obtained the name of outer barristers. The course of legal education consisted principally of readings and mootings. The readings were expositions of important statutes. These readings being accompanied by costly entertainments, especially at Lincoln’s Inn, their original object was forgotten in the splendour of the tables, for which the benchers were severely reprimanded by Charles I. The readings were eventually suspended, but were revived about 1796. Mootings were questions on doubtful points of law, argued between certain of the benchers and barristers in the hall. There was also another exercise in the Inns of Court, called ’bolting’—not gastronomically—which was a private arguing of cases by some of the students and barristers. The term was probably derived from