In early colonial days the legislature sometimes set a limit to
the number of attorneys who could be allowed to practice before
the courts. In some colonies the number at the bar of a
particular court was fixed; in others the number of lawyers in
each county.[Footnote: Acts and Laws of the Colony of Conn., May
session, 1730, Chap. LIV. Hunt, "Life of Edward Livingston," 48.]
No such limitation now exists in any State, and the matter is
left to be regulated by the law of supply and demand. This by
the census of 1900 required over 114,000.

The freer a country is, and the quicker its step in the march of
civilization, the more lawyers it will naturally have. The
growth and importance of the bar are stunted wherever it is
overshadowed by an hereditary aristocracy. A land of absolutism
and stagnation has no use for lawyers. The institutions of China
would not be safe if she had a bar. Lawyers are a conservative
force in a free country; an upheaving force under a despotic
government. In Russia one is found enough to serve over thirty
thousand; in the United States there is about one to every six
hundred and sixty of the population,[Footnote: In 1870, there was
one to every 946; in 1880, one to every 782.] and in England one
to every eleven hundred.

The colonial lawyers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
occupied an inferior place in the community as compared with that
now held by the legal profession. There was comparatively little
opportunity to rise to eminence. The positions on the bench, as
has been seen, were largely held by those not trained as lawyers.
Before such judges it was a waste of words to make elaborate