Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1895

Abstract

All callings are to a greater or less extent interdependent. One should not be fostered at the expense of another, yet any improvement along a given line is more than local and immediate in its influence. It reaches more than those who are directly concerned. The building up and perfecting of a single industry may add to the wealth and importance of its promoters, but to argue that they are the only beneficiaries, would be to leave out of the case all of the indirect results that naturally and inevitably flow from a very successful undertaking. The fostering of.an enterprise by the shutting out of foreign competition, can only be justified upon the theory that the people as a whole are benefited thereby. Reference to specific example would hardly be necessary to emphasize this idea, if we were to confine our inquiries to the business world or to the industries, for here the faut is constantly recognized and of necessity must be made an element in every important problem. But I am not so sure that laymen, or any considerable portion of them, realize that the principle applies with equal force to the learned professions, so called. That every man, whatever his calling or walk in life, is interested, for example, in sound legal education, because thereby professional standards are raised and greater professional excellence secured, would not, I fear, receive a ready assent in many quarters. But venture the assertion that it is not only the duty of every citizen but that it is for his interest to do all that lies in his power to forward any well considered movement that has in view the raising of the standards for admission to the legal profession. It is a duty that he owes to the State and to himself, a duty that springs from his citizenship, but it is one that he can well perform if we consider it solely from a selfish and pecuniary point of view.

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