for example, are organised as a whole, with a Council representative of the profession as a whole. That Council, representative of all who practice as lawyers, is a responsible body, not only to the lawyers who are represented in it, but to and in the State on behalf of the legal profession. It is responsible for the honour and good conduct of lawyers. It is responsible for the economic maintenance of its constituents. No lawyer is allowed to practice except by consent of the Legal Council—that is to say, except by the consent of all other lawyers. The legal profession as a whole—in the legal sense, as a Person—protects its own honour, protects the individual lawyer, protects the public interest (in theory, at least), and requires a guarantee of efficiency and rectitude from every lawyer before he is allowed to practice his profession.
So it was in ancient Ireland. At that time, when the Assembly of the Nation met, the lawyers, or 'brehons,' met in a Council of their own. The administrative heads of each unit of local government met in a Council of their own. The Recorders, or Seanchaidhe, of the local petty states, met in a Council of their own. And each Council was responsible for the administration of its own concerns. Each Council drew up its own regulations, for the conduct of it own duties in the State, and for the protection of its own 'functional' rights. Each Council, in the modern legal phrase, was a responsible 'Person,' and was by the State, as it existed at that time, entrusted with the conduct and administration of its own affairs, subject to the general execution of the public interest.
It lay with the Assembly of the Nation to co-ordinate the whole in the public interest. Whether this was or was not done effectively in olden times is indifferent to the present problem of Functional Councils in the modern State, with its better organisation and more perfect national sense. The problem of organisation is very real, but it does not affect the necessity of functional representation and functional responsibility in the State. It is, for example, absurd that persons unfamiliar with architectural
