The great charters, the Petition of Right,
the Habeas Corpus Act, the Bill of Rights, and the Acts of Settlement,
establishing the judiciary independent of Royal control, were obtained
at the instance of lawyers who knew better than any other class the
absolute necessity for such reforms in the maintenance of free
institutions.
The evolution of the Bar in this country during colonial
times--especially in New England--was a curious counterpart of the
history of the English Bar three centuries before. The founders of New
England came here to escape a persecution for their religious beliefs
and law was closely connected in their minds with the injustices, the
inequalities and the rigid hardships of the common law as administered
by judges appointed and removable at the will of the Tudors and Stuarts.
At that time lawyers exercising their profession were the instruments of
a system that had become non-progressive. They had lost the principles
of justice in technicalities and had become mere political tools in the
hands of tyrants. But in England, the law soon lost its narrowing, hard
and inflexible character through the intervention of courts of equity
and through the genius and broad views of great judges of common law
like Mansfield.
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