Colonial statutes were then passed, forbidding such underlings of the
court to practice law at all. But lawyers were not popular in colonial
days even after the Bar became able and respectable. In fact a bitter
spirit was manifested against lawyers even as late as Shays's Rebellion
after the Revolutionary War.
Between the years 1750 and 1775, more than a hundred and fifty young men
from the colonies were admitted to one of the four Inns of Court and
became educated lawyers with the purpose of entering the profession in
their native colonies. How far the presence of such a class of educated
lawyers through the colonies contributed to the resentment against the
stupidity and injustice of the English colonial policy which brought
about the Revolution, cannot be estimated exactly; but certain it is
that the preparation of the lawyers who were then in their prime appears
to have been Providential interference in behalf of the people of the
United States. Never in history has the profession of the law received
so great a harvest of profound students of the constitutional principles
of government as did our country at this time.
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