propositions.  It has never for instance had the shamelessness of such a traditionless and undisciplined class as the early factory organisers.  It has never had the dull incoherent wickedness of the sort of men who exploit drunkenness and the turf.  It offends within limits.  Barristers can be, and are, disbarred.  But it is now a profession extraordinarily out of date; its code of honour derives from a time of cruder and lower conceptions of human relationship.  It apprehends the State as a mere “ring” kept about private disputations; it has not begun to move towards the modern conception of the collective enterprise as the determining criterion of human conduct.  It sees its business as a mere play upon the rules of a game between man and man, or between men and men.  They haggle, they dispute, they inflict and suffer wrongs, they evade dues, and are liable or entitled to penalties and compensations.  The primary business of the law is held to be decision in these wrangles, and as wrangling is subject to artistic elaboration, the business of the barrister is the business of a professional wrangler; he is a bravo in wig and gown who fights the duels of ordinary men because they are incapable, very largely on account of the complexities of legal procedure, of fighting for themselves.  His business is never to explore any fundamental right in the matter.  His business is to say all that can be said for his client, and to conceal or minimise whatever can be said against his client.  The successful promoted advocate, who in Britain and the United States of America is the judge, and whose habits and interests all incline him to disregard the realities of the case in favour of the points in the forensic game, then adjudicates upon the contest. . . .

Now this condition of things is clearly incompatible with the modern conception of the world as becoming a divine kingdom.  When the world is openly and confessedly the kingdom of God, the law court will exist only to adjust the differing views of men as to the manner of their service to God; the only right of action one man will have against another will be that he has been prevented or hampered or distressed by the other in serving God.  The idea of the law court will have changed entirely from a place of dispute, exaction and vengeance, to a place of adjustment.  The individual or some state organisation will plead on behalf of the common good either against some state official or state regulation, or against the actions or inaction of another individual.  This is the only sort of legal proceedings compatible with the broad beliefs of the new faith. . . .  Every religion that becomes ascendant, in so far as it is not otherworldly, must necessarily set its stamp upon the methods and administration of the law.  That this was not the case with Christianity is one of the many contributory aspects that lead one to the conviction that it was not Christianity that took possession of the Roman empire, but an imperial adventurer who took possession of an all too complaisant Christianity.