This may seem a startling statement, but I think it is the absolute truth. It should be the truth for the Bench of Today should be, and I believe it is, the fullest expression of the world's best civilization, and is the furthest reach of our age's effort in popular administration and self-government.

The general elevation of the profession itself is one of the first things to be done in any effort to impress the public mind with the importance of the profession to our public welfare. This is much easier to be seen than to be accomplished, but it is well for us to understand the condition, whether we see the remedy clearly or not. By all means we should exact higher standards before admission to the Bar is possible. The American Bar Association adopted the following recommendations in its meeting at Seattle in 1908:

"Recommending the establishment in each State of one Board of Examiners for admission to the Bar.

"Deploring that any law school should admit students whó are not high school graduates.

"Recommending that by statute the completion of a high school course should be required for admission.

"Expressing the opinion that two years of a college course would be a more profitable requirement.

"Approving the increase of the period of legal study to three years for graduates of a law school, and to four years for those who are not graduates.

"Disapproving of the degrees of correspondence schools.

"Strongly disapproving of admission to the bar solely upon law school diplomas."

The raising of the literary standard is only the beginning of the work. Of course, we are not to be our "brother's keeper" in the legal profession any more than in any other profession, but as the work of our profession is largely done in public view, every shortcoming is plainly observed and severely criticised. It behooves those of us who desire to elevate the profession to set our faces like flint against every unworthy and unprofessional trick by which some temporary advantage may be gained at the expense of justice. No one wishes to become a professional censor, or be considered a public scold, but the perversion of a noble art should not be passed by in silence by a noble profession.

The members of the Bar can do much by maintaining a proper attitude in ordinary, every-day court proceedings. Can anyone be surprised, after witnessing some of the barn-storming court proceedings that we occasionally see in the court room, and hearing what some disappointed lawyer says of the court to a client whose case he has lost (all on account of the ignorance and stupidity of the presiding judge, of course), that that man and his kindred, who came to see him win his case, whether right or wrong, leave the court thoroughly satisfied with the necessity of the recall of judges, or at least with the recall of one particular decision?

The bar can do much in the daily intercourse of its members with their clients, and the public at large, in encouraging temperate utterance and a proper regard for those limitations upon individual rights so necessary to be observed if organized society is to endure. The bar of some other States (because Mississippi is too poor to have furnished many examples of this kind) could do much if they would lessen their fees and advise some of their clients to moderate their greed, and lessen their toll, to be levied upon the public in similar proportions. There has never been a trust or combine, which ground the faces of the poor, nor a successful get-rich-quick concern, which preyed upon the public, whose trail at some time did not lead to and from some lawyer's office, and this fact, which is universally understood, has not helped to inspire confidence in the profession in the public mind.

Another conspicuous service the Bar can render the State is by refusing to support any member of this profession for a judicial position unless he has the qualities of mind and heart, and also the habits and judicial temperament necessary to make a judge. Nothing else is half so potent in creating a contempt for the law as an ignorant, partisan judge, and nearly all ignoramuses are partisans on the Bench as elsewhere. Next to the ignoramus on the Bench, and not far behind him in his ability to create a contempt for all lawful authority, is the judicial martinet clothed with a little brief authority. From all such may God and the Bar deliver us!

The Bench can do more than any or all agencies combined to restore and maintain that degree of public confidence which it has heretofore enjoyed. An eminent lawyer in speaking on this subject has recently said:

"The general respect for the decisions of our courts which has sustained the judicial branch of our Government, as a distinctive and necessary part of our constitutional system, has been based upon the idea that judicial decisions are something quite distinct and different from the expression of political opinions or the advocacy of economic or social theories. Profoundly devoted to the reign of the law, with its prescribed universal rules, as distinguished from the reign of men, with their changing desires, and impulses, our people have always ascribed a certain sanctity to the judicial office, have invested its holders with especial dignity, and have regarded them in the exercise of their office with a respect almost amounting to reverence, as above all conflicts of parties, and of factions, because these officers are the guardians of the law as it is. Our people have been imbued with a deep sense of the truth that upon the preservation of the law as it is at every moment in its course of continuous change and development depend the preservation of order, the prevention of anarchy, the protection of the weak against the aggression of the strong, the perpetuity of free institutions, the continuance of liberty and justice; matters of infinitely greater concern than

all the new proposals which excite the activity and controversy of parties and political leaders, of critics and reformers.

"If this view is to be changed, and the decisions of our courts are to be considered in the same way and upon the same presumptions and with no greater respect for authority than in the case of political opinions, the authority of the courts will inevitably decline, the independence of the judicial branch will cease; judicial decision will interpret the law always to suit the majority of the moment, and the recall will be the natural and logical expression of the relation to be assumed between the people and the courts.'

Notwithstanding the high regard which our people have heretofore felt for our courts and their decisions, a marked change in their attitude towards both has been manifested in recent years, and men in high and low places have spoken and written very plainly on the subject. It is not necessary to refer to such articles as the "Big Business and the Bench," which have been appearing in Everybody's Magazine, some of the absurdities of which were recently exposed in "Law Notes," to prove this assertion, but we find the same tendency manifested in the leading law magazines of the country.

In the March number of "The Bench and Bar," Hon. Wm. J. Gaynor, mayor of the city of New York, and a former justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, in answer to the question, "Do our courts stand in the way of social and economic progress?" answers bluntly, "Yes, they do, and have done so for a long time." While we might not care very much for his individual opinion on the subject, Mr, Gaynor reinforces and supports his position, and apparently "makes good" by reference, among other cases, to the decisions of the New York courts, declaring the statutes of that State, referring to underground bakeries, the manufacture of tobacco in tenement houses, and the working of women in factories at night, unconstitutional. It appears to the average lawyer that, under the police power of the State of New York, its Legislature was the best judge of legislation tending to the "health, comfort and safety and general welfare of society" of that State, and that the court was stretching its authority to declare such acts unconstitutional.

Some of our courts have been a little too hasty with injunctions and not quite as judicial as they might have been in passing upon the constitutionality of the Acts of the Legislatures of the several States. In this connection they might remember with profit the admonition of Chief Justice Marshall in the case of Fletcher vs. Peck:

"The question, whether a law be void for its repugnancy to the Constitution, is, at all times, a question of much delicacy, which ought seldom, if ever, to be decided in the affirmative, in a doubtful case. The court, when impelled by duty to render such a judgment, would be unworthy of its station, could it be unmindful of the solemn obligations which that station imposes. But it is not on slight implications and vague conjecture, that

the legislature is to be pronounced to have transcended its powers, and its acts to be considered as void. The opposition between the Constitution and the law should be such that the judge feels a clear and strong conviction of their incompatibility with each other."

I cannot more fittingly close what I have said on this subject than to adopt as my own the closing sentences found in the address delivered by Mr. Root, and hereinbefore referred to:

"One other thing we can all do, and that is to encourage and exhibit the true spirit of temperate and patriotic consideration, which is the primary requisite to success in working out the probems of self-government. There is no reason to believe that those who seek to accomplish their will concerning the political and social questions of our day are any more sincere in their convictions than have been those who in other times and in other lands have stained the earth with the blood of countless thousands in the conflicts between religions and sects, and races and classes of men, or that they are any more sincere than those who in times now happily passing away have, by appeal to arms, kept the constitutional republics of Central and South America in a state of almost perpetual revolution. The appeal to prejudice and passion and hatred finds its natural sequence in appeals to force and in destruction of order. True love of country is not mere blind partisanship. It is regard for the people of one's country and all of them; it is a feeling of fellowship and brotherhood for all of them; it is a desire for the prosperity and happiness of all of them; it is kindly and considerate judgment towards all of them. The first duty of popular self-government is individual selfcontrol. The essential condition of true progress is that it shall be based upon grounds of reason, and not of prejudice. Lincoln's noble sentiment of 'charity for all and malice towards none' was not a specific for the civil war, but is a living principle of action. These are truisms, but if at any time they should be forgotten (and they seem to be sometimes), we should remember that they are also essentials; and we should recall them and insist upon them and preach them, for they are part of the gospel of human freedom."

"There is certainly, without any exception, no profession in which so many temptations beset the path to swerve from the line of strict integrity, in which so many delicate and difficult questions of duty are continually arising. There are pitfalls and mantraps at every step and the mere youth, at the very outset of his career, needs often the prudence and self-denial as well as the moral courage, which belong commonly to riper years. High moral principle is the only safe guide, the only torch to light his way amidst darkness and obstruction."-GEORGE SHARSWOOD.

"Craft is the vice, not the spirit, of the profession. Trick is professional prostitution. Falsehood is professional apostasy. The strength of a lawyer is in thorough knowledge of legal truth, in thorough devotion to legal right. Truth and integrity can do more in the profession than the subtlest and wiliest devices. The power of integrity is the rule; the power of fraud is the exception. Emulation and zeal lead lawyers astray; but the general law of the profession is duty, not success. In it, as elsewhere in human life, the judgment of success is but the verdict of little minds. Professional duty, faithfully and well performed, is the lawyer's glory. This is equally true of the Bench and of the Bar." -EDWARD G. RYAN.

"Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nomina[ winner is often a real loser-in fees, expenses and waste of time. As a peacemaker, the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereupon to stir up strife and put money in his pocket? A moral tone ought to be enforced in the profession which would drive such men out of it.”—ABRAHAM LINCOLN.