iscretion, but that of the Attorney-General, whose _locum tenens_
at sufferance, he is; and he consequently does so under the obligation
of the official oath."[16] On the other hand, if it were considered that
a lawyer was bound or even had a right to refuse to undertake the
defence of a man because he thought him guilty, if the rule were
universally adopted, the effect would be to deprive a defendant, in such
cases, of the benefit of counsel altogether.

The same course of remark applies to civil causes. A defendant has a
legal right to require that the plaintiffs demand against him should be
proved and proceeded with according to law. If it were thrown upon the
parties themselves, there would he a very great inequality between them,
according to their intelligence, education, and experience,
respectively. Indeed, it is one of the most striking advantages of
having a learned profession, who engage as a business in representing
parties in courts of justice, that men are thus brought nearer to a
condition of equality, that causes are tried and decided upon their
merits, and do not depend upon the personal characters and
qualifications of the immediate parties.[17] Thus, too, if a suit be
instituted against a man to recover damages for a tort, the defendant
has a right to all the ingenuity and eloquence he can command in his
defence, that even if he has committed a wrong, the amount of the
damages may not exceed what the plaintiff is justly entitled to recover.
But the claim of a plaintiff stands upon a somewhat different footing.
Counsel have an undoubted right, and are in duty bound, to refuse to be
concerned for a plaintiff in the legal pursuit of a demand, which
offends his sense of what is just and right. The courts are open to the
party in person to prosecute his own claim, and plead his own cause;
and although he ought to examine and be well-satisfied before he refuses
to a suitor the benefit of his professional skill and learning, yet it
would be on his part an immoral act to afford that assistance, when his
conscience told him that the client was aiming to perpetrate a wrong
through the means of some advantage the law may have afforded him. "It
is a popular but gross mistake," says the late Chief Justice Gibson, "to
suppose that a lawyer owes no fidelity to any one except his client, and
that the latter is the keeper of his professional conscience. He is
expressly bound by his official oath to behave himself, in h