Johnson, in reply to some objections of Boswell, argues at length, but, I think, with some sophistry, in favour of the profession. 'You are not,' he says, 'to deceive your client with false representations of your opinion. You are not to tell lies to the judge, but you need have no scruple about taking up a case which you believe to be bad, or affecting a warmth which you do not feel. You do not know your cause to be bad till the judge determines it.... An argument which does not convince yourself may convince the judge, and, if it does convince him, you are wrong and he is right.... Everybody knows you are paid for affecting warmth for your client, and it is therefore properly no dissimulation.' Basil Montagu, in an excellent treatise on the subject, urges that an advocate is simply an officer assisting in the administration of justice under the impression that truth is best elicited, and that difficulties are most effectually disentangled, by the opposite statements of able men. He is an indispensable part of a machine which in its net result is acting in the real interests of truth, although he 'may profess feelings which he does not feel and may support a cause which he knows to be wrong,' and although his advocacy is 'a species of acting without an avowal that it is acting.' It is, of course, possible to adopt the principles of the Quaker and to condemn as unchristian all participation in the law courts, and although the Catholic Church has never adopted this extreme, it seems to have instinctively recognised some incompatibility between the profession of an advocate and the saintly character. Renan notices the significant fact that St. Yves, a saint of Brittany, appears to be the only advocate who has found a place in its hagiology, and the worshippers were accustomed to sing on his festival 'Advocatus et non latro--Res miranda populo.' It is indeed evident that a good deal of moral compromise must enter into this field, and the standards of right and wrong that have been adopted have varied greatly. How far, for example, may a lawyer support a cause which he believes to be wrong? In some ancient legislations advocates were compelled to swear that they would not defend causes which they thought or discovered to be unjust.[35] St. Thomas Aquinas has laid down in emphatic terms that any lawyer who undertakes the defence of an unjust cause is committing a grievous sin. It is unlawful, he contends, to co-operate with any one who is doing wrong, and an advocate clearly counsels and assists him whose cause he undertakes. Modern Catholic casuists have dealt with the subject in the same spirit. They admit, indeed, that an advocate may undertake the defence of a criminal whom he knows to be guilty, in order to bring to light all extenuating circumstances, but they contend that no advocate should undertake a civil cause unless by a previous and careful examination he has convinced himself that it is a just one; that no