FEES. Neither barristers nor physicians could recover their fees by legal proceed ings against their clients or patients, except under a special contract. The ground of this rule was that they are regarded not as payment, but as an expression of gratitude for services the value of which cannot be appreciated in money. The origin of the rule in the case of the advocates, is traced to the relation which subsisted between patrons and their clients in ancient Rome. When the former appeared as the defenders of the latter, they, practiced, as Blackstone says (iii. 29, Kerr's ed.), gratis, for honor merely, or at the most for the sake of gaining influence; and so likewise, it is established with us that a counsel can maintain no action for his fees, which are given, not as locatio rel conductio, but as guiddam honorarium; not as a salary or hire, but as a mere gratuity, which a counselor cannot demand without doing wrong to his reputation. The rule at Rome was maintained even under the emperors, and Tacitus mentions (Ann. lib. ii. c. 5) that it was directed by a decree of the senate that these honoraria should not in any case exceed 10,000 sesterces, or about £80 of English money. It has further been decided in England, that no action lies to recover back a fee given to a barrister to argue a cause which he did not attend (Peake, 122). But special pleaders, equity drafts men, and conveyancers, who have taken out certificates to practice under the bar, and therefore are not counsel, may recover their reasonable charges for business done by them (Faucher v. Norman, 3 B. and C., 744). Another rule with reference to the fees of barristers and advocates is, that they are paid before they are earned; a rule which, by removing from its members all pecuniary interest in the issue of suits, has done much to maintain the independence and respectability of the bar. As regards physi cians, the rule that a fee could not be recovered by an action at law, was applied in the case of Charley v. Bolcot, June 30, 1791 (4 T. R. 317). If, however, either a barrister or a physician acted under a special agreement or promise of a certain payment, then an action might be brought for the money. But all medical practitioners were relieved from the above code of honor by the act of 21 and 22 Viet. 90, which applied to the United Kingdom, and enabled them to recover in any court of law their reasonable charges as well as costs of medicines and medical appliances used. This rule applies to physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries as defined by the statute. Members of the
inferior branches of both professions—attorneys, solicitors, etc., on the one hand, and surgeons, dentists, cuppers, and the like on the other—were always entitled to raise action for their fees. In Scotland, the same rules prevail as in England with reference to both professions. In France, though the delicate sense of honor of the bar has always been preserved with quite as much care as in England, the rule is somewhat different. In law, an action for the recovery of fees would be maintainable in that country by an advocate; but " in Paris, the rule of the ancient bar, founded on the dis interestedness which was its characteristic, and according to which any judicial demand of payment of fees was strictly forbidden under pain of erasure from the table (of advocates), has been religiously preserved." History of the French Bar, by Robert Jones, 1855. The practice in France, however, seems to be for the fees of advocates to be paid afterwards, though any bargain with the client or his agent that their amount shall depend on the issue of a trial, is regarded as dishonorable, and on several occa sions the bar has vehemently resisted regulations calling on them to acknowledge receipt of their fees, as- wounding their sensibility. There can scarcely be a stronger proof of the value of what seem in themselves to be trifling and pedantic pieces of etiquette, than the dignified and independent position, which, from its scrupulous sense of honor, the French bar has maintained during all the political revolutions which the country has undergone.
(SzintEs), the same as the Latin Alba Regia, or the German Stuhlweissen burg, is one of the most ancient royal free towns of Hungary, situated in a marshy dis trict about 40 m. s.w. of Pesth. Under the Arpadian kings, it was the metropolis of the realm, and the residence of the sovereigns, who have been often crowned and buried there. On many occasions, the diets also were held in F., where twelve kings—among which are St. Stephen, and the great Mathias Corvinus—lie buried. It is the seat of a bishop, and contains a pop. of (1809) 22,6S3, chiefly Roman Catholics, and all of the Magyar race. Water is supplied by an artesian well.
a large lake of Brazil, lies on the maritime border of the province of Rio Jan eiro, and is distant 150 in., to the n.c., from the city of the same name. It is so near to the Atlantic that it has been connected with it by means of a canal. F. is about a degree to the u. of th&southern tropic.