In a letter addressed to the editor of _Notes and Queries_, a writer who signs himself 'Causidicus,' observes--"When I entered the profession (about fifty years ago) no junior barrister presumed to carry a bag in the Court of Chancery, unless one had been presented to him by a King's Counsel; who, when a junior was advancing in practice, took an opportunity of complimenting him on his increase of business, and giving him his own bag to carry home his papers. It was then a distinction to carry a bag, and a proof that a junior was rising in his profession. I do not know whether the custom prevailed in other courts." From this it appears that fifty years since the bag was an honorable distinction at the Chancery bar, giving its bearer some such professional status as that which is conferred by 'silk' in these days when Queen's Counsel are numerous.
The same professional usage seems to have prevailed at the Common Law bar more than eighty years ago; for in 1780, when Edward Law joined the Northern Circuit, and forthwith received a large number of briefs, he was complimented by Wallace on his success, and presented with a bag. Lord Campbell asserts that no case had ever before occurred where a junior won the distinction of a bag during the course of his first circuit. There is no record of the date when members of the junior bar received permission to carry bags according to their own pleasure; it is even matter of doubt whether the permission was ever expressly accorded by the leaders of the profession--or whether the old restrictive usage died a gradual and unnoticed death. The present writer, however, is assured that at the Chancery bar, long after _all_ juniors were allowed to carry bags, etiquette forbade them to adopt bags of the same color as those carried by their leaders. An eminent Queen's Counsel, who is a member of that bar, remembers that when he first donned a stuff gown, he, like all Chancery jurors, had a purple bag--whereas the wearers of silk at the same period, without exception, carried red bags.
Before a complete and satisfactory account can be given of the use of bags by lawyers, as badges of honor and marks of distinction, answers must be found for several questions which at present remain open to discussion. So late as Queen Anne's reign, lawyers of the lowest standing, whether advocates or attorneys, were permitted to carry bags;--a right which the junior bar appears to have lost when Edward Law joined the Northern Circuit. At what date between Queen Anne's day and 1780 (the year in which Lord Ellenborough made his _début_ in the North), was this change effected? Was the change gradual or sudden? To what cause was it due? Again, is it possible that Lord Campbell and Causidicus wrote under a misapprehension, when they gave testimony concerning the usages of the bar with regard to bags, at the close of the last and the beginning of the present century? The memory of the distinguished Queen's Counsel, to whom allusion is made in the preceding paragraph, is quite clear that in his student days Chancery jurors were forbidden by etiquette to carry _red_ bags, but were permitted to carry blue bags; and he is strongly of opinion that the restriction, to which Lord Campbell and Causidicus draw attention, did not apply at any time to blue bags, but only concerned red bags, which, so late as thirty years since, unquestionably were the distinguishing marks of men in leading Chancery practice. Perhaps legal readers of this chapter will favor the writer with further information on this not highly important, but still not altogether uninteresting subject.