Note 1 — PROFESSIONAL ETHICS.

This oath seems first to have been prescribed by the Act of Assembly, passed August 22d, 1752: "An act for regulating and establishing fees." (1 Smith's Laws, 218.) It has been copied into the revised Act of 14th April, 1834, s. 69 (Pamphlet Laws, 354), with the addition of the clause to "support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this Commonwealth." In England, by the Stat. 4 Henry IV, c. 18 (A. D. 1402), it was provided, "that all attorneys shall be examined by the Justices, and by their discretion, their names put in the roll, and they that be good and virtuous, and of good fame, shall be received, and sworn well and truly to serve in their offices, and especially that they make no suit in a foreign country." The present oath or affirmation is, that he "will truly and honestly demean himself in the practice of an attorney, according to the best of his knowledge and ability." Stat. 2 Geo. II, c. 23 (A. D. 1729); Stat. 6 & 7 Vict. c. 73. The qualification of a sergeant-at-law, is given at large in 2 Inst. 213; and in the valuable old book, "The Mirror of Justices," chap. 2, sec. 5, it is said that "every countor is chargeable by the oath, that he shall do no wrong nor falsity, contrary to his knowledge, but shall plead for his client the best he can, according to his understanding."