ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Hon. A. F. Fox, West Point, Miss. ROCEEDING without preliminary remarks with the P address required of me by the Constitution, a review of important statutes-State and Federal-that have been enacted during the past year, I shall indulge in such criticism and commentary as may seem legitimate and of interest to the profession, "nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice." A noteworthy Act of Congress, approved March 3, 1911, operative January 1, 1912, is the Act designated and cited as "The Judicial Code." By its provisions, circuit courts are abolished and the jurisdiction of district courts limited to cases involving not less than $3,000.00. I am relieved of the duty of reviewing this statute, for the reason that Mr. J. S. Sexton will present a paper on this subject. At the extraordinary session of Congress, convened on the 4th day of April, A. D., 1911, several important bills were passed. Among them a bill to reduce the duties on wool, and the manufactures of wool, which the President returned without his approval. In his veto message he based his objection to the bill on the sole and singular ground that he did not know anything about the questions involved in the bill, or at least he was not sufficiently informed to know whether it was a good measure or not. He took the position that the President and the Congress of the United States ought to abdicate their constitutional functions and prerogatives and let the whole matter be determined by a Tariff Board, composed of tariff experts, who alone were competent to solve this simple economic problem-the simple question of the expediency and righteousness of reducing the tariff on woolen manufacturers from 100 per cent ad valorem, which is prohibitive, to 40 per cent, which is highly protective. In over a century of tariff legislation, and especially in framing the McKinley Bill, the Dingley Bill, and the Aldrich-Payne Bill, all highly protective measures, designed not so much to raise revenue, but rather to reduce revenues and levy protective and prohibitory duties, experts were not needed and were never suggested; the tax was piled on without any thought of the oppression that might result to the consumer; but when it came to redeeming his pledge and that of his party to revise the tariff downwards, the expert friends of the manufacturers must be called in to save their masters' profits. To justify his extreme caution and conservatism, the President says: "More than a million of people are engaged in the manufacture of woolen goods." It seems not to have occurred to him that seventy million of people in this country are engaged in wearing woolen goods, and their time is largely employed in making the money to pay for the increased cost resulting from the tariff. About the same time Congress passed two other bills amending the tariff laws, one a bill to reduce the duties on the manufactures of cotton, and one to place on the free list agricultural implements, cotton bagging, ties, leather, boots, shoes, fence wire, flour, lumber, meats, and other articles. These met the same fate and were promptly killed by veto messages equally as illogical. He declared that a hundred thousand people were engaged in manufacturing the articles put on the free list. It seems not to have occurred to him that if a tariff on bagging, ties, wire fencing and agricultural implements was a good thing because one hundred thousand people were engaged in manufacturing them, it would be a much better thing to put them on the free list because that would protect a much greater industry and twenty-five million people interested in agriculture. On the 15th of August, 1911, the President, in a very able message, vetoed the House Joint Resolution to admit the Territories of Arizona and New Mexico into the Union, based on the ground, as to Arizona, that her Constitution provided for the recall of all officers, including judges. Congress sustained the veto and by Joint Resolution, approved August 21, 1911, voted to admit these Territories, with the condition on the part of Arizona, that she adopt an amendment excepting the judiciary from the recall. This, and certain amendments to the Constitution of New Mexico, were adopted by the people, and the Constitutions of both have been approved and both have been admitted to the Union. Most of us doubtless approve the President's objections, yet it has all been much ado about nothing, because Arizona is now an independent and sovereign State, and, as admitted by the President, she can at any time re-incorporate the judicial recall in her Constitution, just as when Mississippi was re-admitted to the Union in 1870, it was upon the fundamental condition that the Constitution of 1869 should never be so amended as to in any way abridge or deny the right of suffrage to any male citizen over the age of twenty-one years. But when clothed with the sovereignty of Statehood, she snapped the shackles with which Congress attempted to fetter her, and in the Constitution of 1890, determined for herself the qualifications of those who should exercise the right of ballot, with no restrictions binding her save those imposed by the Fifteenth Amendment. This exercise of the arbitrary and monarchical right of vetoing bills relating exclusively to taxation and revenue, and in dictating to a people what should be in their organic law, should startle those of us who imagine that we have a republican form of government. England, from whom the colonies rebelled because she imposed taxes without their consent, is today, in many respects, far more democratic than we. Although the veto is still the nominal prerogative of the Crown the King dares not exercise it. Parliament is supreme, and when an Act is presented to his majesty, he has no discretion but affixes the royal assent by subscribing "Le Roi le-veut," which is the same expression used by William the Conqueror, but it is no longer one of grace and kingly favor. The position of George V is very much like that of a puppet in a Punch and Judy show. But the English Parliament has recently gone very much further and taken away from the House of Lords its veto power in all money bills (those relating to taxation and revenue), and greatly restricted it in all public bills. By the courtesy of Mr. Lowther, Speaker of the House of Commons, I was a spectator last August in the House of Commons when this resolution was accomplished by the passage of what is known as the "Parliament Act of 1911." It was a most dramatic scene and the first time in the history of Parliament that the House was ever adjourned by the Speaker because of unprecedented disorder. The bill provides as follows: "Whereas, It is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular basis, instead of a hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation; And "Whereas, Provision will require hereafter to be made by Parliament in a measure effecting such substitution for limiting and defining the powers of the new Second Chamber, but it is expedient to make such provision as in this Act appears for restricting the existing powers of the House of Lords; "Be it therefore, enacted (etc.,) as follows: "1. If a Money Bill, having been passed by the House of Commons, and sent up to the House of Lords at least one month before the end of the session, is not passed by the House of Lords, without amendment, within one month after it is so sent up to that House, the Bill shall, unless the House of Commons direct to the contrary, be presented to His Majesty and become an Act of Parliament on the royal assent being signified, notwithstanding that the House of Lords have not consented to the Bill. "2. If any Public Bill is passed by the House of Commons in three successive sessions and having been sent up to the House of Lords at least one month before the end of the session, is rejected by the House of Lords in each of these sessions, that Bill shall be presented to His Majesty and become an Act of Parlia |