advocate can without sin undertake a cause which he knows or strongly believes to be unjust; that if he has done so he is himself bound in conscience to make restitution to the party that has been injured by his advocacy; that if in the course of a trial he discovers that a cause which he had believed to be just is unjust he must try to persuade his client to desist, and if he fails in this must himself abandon the cause, though without informing the opposite party of the conclusion at which he had arrived; that in conducting his case he must abstain from wounding the reputation of his neighbour or endeavouring to influence the judges by bringing before them misdeeds of his opponent which are not connected with and are not essential to the case.[36] As lately as 1886 an order was issued from Rome, with the express approbation of the Pope, forbidding any Catholic, mayor or judge, to take part in a divorce case, as divorce is absolutely condemned by the Church.[37] There have been, and perhaps still are, instances of lawyers endeavouring to limit their practice to cases which they believed to be just. Sir Matthew Hale is a conspicuous example, but he acknowledged that he considerably relaxed his rule on the subject, having found in two instances that cases which at the first blush seemed very worthless were in truth well founded. As a general rule English lawyers make no discrimination on this ground in accepting briefs unless the injustice is very flagrant, nor will they, except in very extreme cases, do their client the great injury of throwing up a brief which they have once accepted. They contend that by acting in this way the administration of justice in the long run is best served, and in this fact they find its justification. In the conduct of a case there are rules analogous to those which distinguish between honourable and dishonourable war, but they are less clearly defined and less universally accepted. In criminal prosecutions a remarkable though very explicable distinction is drawn between the prosecutor and the defender. It is the etiquette of the profession that the former is bound to aim only at truth, neither straining any point against the prisoner nor keeping back any fact which is favourable to him, nor using any argument which he does not himself believe to be just. The defender, however, is not bound, according to professional etiquette, by such rules. He may use arguments which he knows to be bad, conceal or shut out by technical objections facts that will tell against his clients, and, subject to some wide and vague restrictions, he must make the acquittal of his client his first object.[38]