advocate for his
client, or, more properly, _personated him_. Here, then, without question,
he was to feign and dissimulate his own opinions, and speak those of his
client. And though some of those who call themselves casuists, have held
it unlawful for an advocate to defend what he thinks an ill cause, yet I
apprehend it to be the natural right of every member of society, whether
accusing or accused, to speak freely and fully for himself. And if, either
by a legal or natural incapacity, this cannot be done _in person_, to have
a _proxy_ provided or allowed by the state to do for him what he cannot or
may not do for himself. I apprehend that all states have done it, and that
every advocate is such a proxy."

This explanation goes far. Of a certainty, every man has a right to
approach a court of justice with such plea, or such demand, as the law
gives him. For his ultimate aims, for his moral purposes in so doing, he
alone is responsible. We do not desire the barrister so to prejudge the
cause of the litigant as to decide whether or not he ought, as a moral
man, to carry it into a court of justice. Let his plea, or his demand, be
laid before the tribunal of his country, and as he cannot, in the
complicated state of our jurisprudence, do this for himself, it is right
and equitable that there should be professional men whose function it is
to do this for him. But it follows not that the professional man is to
pledge his own personal convictions in every case he undertakes. _Let him
speak in the name of his client_, let him limit himself to the office of
interpreter, where his own convictions do not allow him to be the zealous
advocate. The state ought to give to every man free access to a court of
justice, and to all the armoury of the law; how he uses the weapons he
finds there, he must account to God and his own conscience, and the moral
judgment of society; but the state is not to give to every rogue the
benefit of the apparent convictions in his favour, of a learned and
honorable gentleman. If the barrister speaks, and is understood to speak,
as from his client, and not from his own conviction, the indiscriminate
advocacy of causes which the administration of justice requires, is
reconcilable with the manifest claims of morality. But not otherwise. To
lend out the zeal of truth to varnish every cause, is what no system of
jurisprudence demands, and what no system of ethics can tolerate. Yet this
is what is done.

If