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duct and the custom of the best of any community not only the basis of law for all, but the standard of conduct for all. The operation of this principle is so common that we are not to give it adequate value. The great saving power in society is the striving by the lower grades of men to reach up and be like the higher grades around them. The impulse to do this is always present. It may be obscured by passion or prejudice or envy, but its silent influence never dies.

If this is so, then let all Americans have a care. If those who are regarded the strongest and best, those upon whom the responsibility for creating and sustaining patriotic sentiments in favor of law, fail to observe it, and seek to subvert it by the power of wealth or superior intelligence, if those who are called to make or enforce the laws for the sake of advancing their own political fortunes forget for one moment their duty to seek the welfare and conserve the liberties of all the people, a shock of disintegrating force finds its way through all the commonwealth down to the very lowest citizen. If the highest do not observe the law, the lowest will not. Pascal remarked: "Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room." While the statement may not be accurate, the idea is valuable for Americans to reflect upon. When young men and women stand on the threshold, they are excited by the blare of many trumpets calling them to rush into the combat of life, and strive to acquire not only wealth but office, fame, learning, social position, distinction of some kind, to possess rather than to be and to bestow. But there are many thousands of choice spirits in America in official station and in the private walks of life who amid all the tumult hear and heed the low, sweet chimes which summon to solitude, to meditation, to repose of thought, to patriotic action and disinterested purpose; and this multitude is striving to be, rather than to acquire, for character rather than gain. Upon these sentiments, peace, law and order, the whole welfare of

society depends. And there is enough of nobility in human nature to keep them forever vital and fresh.

Maitland, the great historian of English law, expresses the opinion that the Great Charter meant above all things that the king, the monarchy, is and shall be below the law. and that when the king made a law he should abide by it. This for centuries has been the safeguard of justice and liberty. So in a democracy, liable to be tossed and moved by passion and impulse, there is no safety for liberty or justice unless all the people are below the law, unless when the people make laws they shall all obey them, so that they shall be the sure defense of the weak as well as the strong, of the African as well as the Caucasian. Unless the laws of democracy stand in majesty and power, neither will democracy itself stand. The people who are unwilling to obey the laws they themselves make and who do not enforce them by a pervading public sentiment as well as legal process against the excited mob or the deliberate conspirator, will surely in the long run drop out of the march of the nations toward higher character and achievement.

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ANNUAL ADDRESS

Delivered before the South Carolina Bar Association January 16, 1903, by Hon. MOORFIELD STOREY,

of Boston.

What Shall We Do With Our Dependencies ?

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the South Carolina Bar: It was with peculiar pleasure that I received the invitation to address you this evening, not only because I felt it to be a high personal compliment, but because it afforded fresh evidence, if such were needed, of how entirely the differences that disturbed us a generation ago have ceased to divide us. When the secretary, the biographer, the disciple of Charles Sumner, is called from Massachusetts to address the Bar of South Carolina, it cannot be doubted that the cordial relations which formerly existed between our States are completely and, I believe, forever restored. If I can, I would carry you back to-night to those early days when our fathers stood shoulder to shoulder in "the times that tried men's soul's," and join with you in renewing their pledge to support those great truths which South Carolina and Massachusetts alike then held to be self-evident.

THE PRESENT POSITION OF OUR DEPENDENCIES.

Our country to-day exercises absolute power over more than ten millions of human beings,-Filipinos, Porto Ricans, and Hawaiians,-twice as many as the whole population of the United States a century ago. Our dominion has been established without consulting them and against such resistance as they could make. They are not American citizens, nor are they likely to become such. They are governed by the President and Congress, but they have no voice in the choice of either. They have no recognized rights under

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