In the spirit OE ^X■EBER 241 tury, the bar had become the near monopoly of urban professional and business classes supplemented by landed gentry. Indeed, it seems that if anything the social composition of the bar became even more elitist during the nineteenth century. “Recruits from other classes that constituted the vast majority of nineteenth century society were virtually non-existent.” Thus, the “... bar rarely served as an avenue along which great leaps of social mobility could be accomplished. The educational background of the bar reflects an even more striking elitism. In both their secondary and higher education the barristers gravitated towards the more exclusive schools and colleges. A handful of public schools and Oxbridge colleges were the breeding grounds of a substantial proportion of the Victorian bar.'°° The best available statistics indicate a significant correlation between, on the one hand, the social and educational background of barristers and their politics; and on the other hand, the barristers’ success in securing the patronage of solicitors and clients, professional advancement and political office. The relative irrationality of the English bar is evident in other ways too. The ideal of the “great man” significantly affected the cultural and intellectual mores of the profession.At all levels of the profession the leading figures were popularly portrayed by contemporary writers as men of remarkable capacity and sometimes considerable eccentricity. There was a ready recourse to versification, some of it reaching McGonagallic heights: “Pale Pollock who consumes the ‘midnight oil’. And plies his task with unremitting toil. Till as the life-drops fromhis checks retreat. He looks as though he had forgot to eat.”'°^ The uncritical celebration of circuit life and colleagues - even those who like Halsbury, Darling, Hewart and Goddard, surely merited some reproof - is typical of the writings of the bar and bench. Through the systemof pupillage, the tradition of the “great man” is informally perpetuated to this day. Certain pupil masters of heads of chambers have served as important models for their junior colleagues.A major source of the fledgling lawyer’s work ethic appears to be the subtle Indoctrination that takes place during apprenticeship, especially through the influence and example of older and senior colleagues. Ibid., p. 107. Duman, op. cit., chap. 1. Ibid., chaps. 1, 3 and 6. Sec R. Cocks, I-'oundations of the Modern Bar, (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1983), chap. 1. On the worship of eccentric “great men”, see Rubinstein, op cit., p. 85, n. 67. Cf. T. Mathicsen, Law. Society and Political Action (London: Academic Press, 1980). chap. 3. Cocks, ibid., p 98. For example, Dicev, Pollock and Maitland stressed the influence and importance of their pupil masters. Judges frequently dedicated their hooks to their pupil masters. Cf. B. Moore Jr., “Historical Notes on the Doctors’ Work Ethic”, Journal of Social History, 1984, pp. 547-72, and Duman, op. cit, pp. 194-5. 105 100 101 102 103
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=