This care extended not only to
his own cases, but to matters which he had heard discussed in his
chambers in Lincoln's Inn or in those of his brother barristers.
You could not move him by saying that everybody was dead in the case
concerned, or that it would be to the credit of particular people to
tell what really happened and what were the true causes and motives of
the action. Nothing of this kind would affect him. He gave for his
silence reasons similar to those which Dr. Lushington gave when, on his
death-bed as a very old man, his family asked him to leave for
historical purposes a record of the truth about Byron's quarrel with his
wife. Dr. Lushington replied that even if he could do so without a
breach of faith with any living person, he would not. He had a higher
duty, and that was to help men and women to feel that they could
unburden themselves fully to their professional advisers, and that there
was no risk of those advisers in the future constituting themselves the
judges of whether this or that thing should become known to the world at
large.
What the client wants is the seal of the confessional. If he cannot have
that, he will often refuse to speak the whole truth.
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