No doubt many excellent and even eminent lawyers continue to play an
important and an honorable part in American politics. Mr. Elihu Root is
a conspicuous example of a lawyer, who has sacrificed a most lucrative
private practice for the purpose of giving his country the benefit of
his great abilities. Mr. Taft was, of course, a lawyer before he was an
administrator, though he had made no professional success corresponding
to that of Mr. Root. Mr. Hughes, also, was a successful lawyer. The
reform movement has brought into prominence many public-spirited
lawyers, who, either as attorney-generals or as district attorneys, have
sought vigorously to enforce the law and punish its violators. The
lawyers, like every class of business and professional men, have felt
the influence of the reforming ideas, which have become so conspicuous
in American practical politics, and they have performed admirable and
essential work on behalf of reform.
But it is equally true that the most prominent and thorough-going
reformers, such as Roosevelt, Bryan, and Hearst, are not lawyers by
profession, and that the majority of prominent American lawyers are not
reformers.
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