And as to the charge against the eminent advocate, Charles Phillips, of seeking to fasten the crime on the innocent, when he knew that his client was guilty, in the trial of Courvoisier for the murder of Lord Russell, that charge was overwhelmingly refuted by the testimony of lawyers and judges present at that trial.  Mr. Phillips supposed his client an innocent man until the trial was nearly concluded.  Then came the unexpected confession from the guilty man, accompanied by the demand that his counsel continue in his case to the end.  At first Mr. Phillips proposed to retire at once from the case; but, on advising with eminent counsel, he was told that it would be wrong for him to betray the prisoner’s confidence, and practically to testify against him, by deserting him at that hour.  He then continued in the case, but, as is shown conclusively in his statement of the facts, with its accompanying proofs, without saying a word or doing a thing that might properly be deemed in the realm of false assertion or intimations.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See Sharswood’s Legal Ethics, pp. 103-107, 183-196.]

The very prominence given in the public press to the charges against Mr. Phillips, and to their refutation, are added proof that the moral sense of the community is against falsehood under any circumstances or in any profession.

Members of the legal profession are bound by the same ethical obligations as other men; yet the civil law, in connection with which they practice their profession, is not in all points identical with the moral law; although it is not in conflict with any of its particulars.  As Chancellor Kent says:  “Human laws are not so perfect as the dictates of conscience, and the sphere of morality is more enlarged than the limits of civil jurisdiction.  There are many duties that belong to the class of imperfect obligations, which are binding on conscience, but which human laws do not and cannot undertake directly to enforce.  But when the aid of a Court of Equity is sought to carry into execution ... a contract, then the principles of ethics have a more extensive sway."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Kent’s Commentaries, Lect. 39, p. 490 f. (4th ed.); cited in Story’s Equity Jurisprudence, VI., p. 229 (13th ed.).]

In the decisions of Equity courts, while the duty of absolute truthfulness between parties in interest is insisted on as vital, and a suppression of the truth from one who had a right to its knowledge, or a suggestion of that which is untrue in a similar case("suggestio falsi aut suppressio veri"), is deemed an element of fraud, the distinction between mere silence when one is entitled to be silent, and concealment with the purpose of deception, is distinctly recognized, as it is not in all manuals on ethics.[1] This is indicated, on the one hand, in the legal maxim Aliud est celare, aliud tacere,—­“It is one thing to conceal, another to be silent;” silence is not necessarily deceptive concealment;[2]