Mr. President; Mr. Dean; Gentlemen about to Graduate in Law:

Merely to welcome you to the ranks, already more than crowded, of a profession once deemed learned and honorable, should not be a difficult task for one whose occupation consists largely in the making of speeches. Prospect or retrospect: the look backward over your years of studious preparation, or forward to the hopes and doubts that overhang the career upon which you now enter,—either is rich in suggestion for an address which marks the close of the preparation and the beginning of the career. Both the forward and the backward glance, indeed, give rise not so much to thoughts as to emotions; and these last, to one charged with this pleasant and honorable duty, might seem fittest for the occasion. For you have had, these years past, instruction enough, no doubt; and one may well guard himself now from being gratuitously didactic.

Nevertheless, while your education has without doubt included, whether by the voice of your instructors, or the books you have read, or, better perhaps than all, by frank and warm discussion with your comrades, the great page 4 subject of the ethics of the profession upon which you are now to enter, it has occurred to me that such discussion has commonly adopted a triple division of the subject, and that such division is not exhaustive. It has been usual to consider the lawyer's duty to his client, to the court, and to his adversary, and to assume that, as lawyer, his special duties are comprehended in these classes. Beyond these, it has been thought, his obligations are those common to all men. To me it does not seem so, I believe that in entering upon the privileges and seizing the opportunities of the legal profession you are also assuming obligations, additional to those I have mentioned, which are peculiar to that profession, but which are no more universally discharged or acknowledged by it than those others. Of these I speak this afternoon; and I propose as my subject