and guide of
American constitutional democracy have been considerably impaired.
Whatever his qualifications have been for the task (and they have,
perhaps, been over-estimated) they are no longer as substantial as they
were. Not only has the average lawyer become a less representative
citizen, but a strictly legal training has become a less desirable
preparation for the candid consideration of contemporary political
problems.

Since 1870 the lawyer has been traveling in the same path as the
business man and the politician. He has tended to become a professional
specialist, and to give all his time to his specialty. The greatest and
most successful American lawyers no longer become legislators and
statesmen as they did in the time of Daniel Webster. They no longer
obtain the experience of men and affairs which an active political life
brings with it. Their professional practice, whenever they are
successful, is so remunerative and so exacting that they cannot afford
either the time or the money which a political career demands. The most
eminent American lawyers usually remain lawyers all their lives; and if
they abandon private practice at all, it is generally for the purpose of
taking a seat on the Bench. Like nearly all other Americans they have
found rigid specialization a condition of success.

A considerable proportion of our legislators and executives continue to
be lawyers, but the difference is that now they are more likely to be
less successful lawyers. Knowledge of the law and a legal habit of mind
still have a great practical value in political work; and the
professional politicians, who are themselves rarely men of legal
training, need the services of lawyers whose legal methods are not
attenuated by scruples. Lawyers of this class occupy the same relation
to the local political "Bosses" as the European lawyer used to occupy in
the court of the absolute monarch. He phrases the legislation which the
ruler decides to be of private or public benefit; and he acts frequently
as his employer's official mouthpiece and special pleader.

No doubt many excellent and even eminent lawyers continue to play an
important and an honorable part in American politics. Mr. Elihu Root is
a conspicuous example of a lawyer, who has sacrificed a most lucrative
private practice for the purpose of giving his country the benefit of
his great abilities. Mr. Taft was, of course, a lawyer before he was an
administrator, though he had