ance for examination. The Act takes effect on and after its passage, but no voluntary petition can be filed within a month thereafter, and no involuntary petition can be filed within four months after its passage. All in all, the Act in many respects is an improvement on the former.

Some of our friends might feel slighted if I should finally omit to mention the fact that by an Act of April 21, Knoxville was made a port of delivery, and the office of Surveyor of Customs created therefor.

In conclusion, let us not, in the midst of stirring scenes, omit to keep in view the work before us, and which, doubtless, will be well presented by our standing committees in the formulation or recommendation of useful and needful legislation.

I feel sure that recommendations will be made, which, if not adopted intact, will be on lines which the association will approve. Let us not merely approve, as presented, or amend, alter, and then approve, but let us at the next session of the Legislature, be prepared to press them home to a final passage. Let us, if necessary, appoint committees whose duty it shall be to bring them before the Legislature, or its judiciary committee, and urge their adoption. Let each member of the association consider himself a committee of one to urge upon the representatives from his county a hearty co-operation to the end that at our next meeting the association shall realize that its labors have not been in vain. Let the result of this meeting make it indeed manifest to our entire membership and to the bar of the State that paramount to the social and fraternal features of our association, commendable and delightful as they may be, is the advancement of our profession to higher legal attainments and the promotion of "improvements in the law and in the modes of its administration."

JAMES STEPHEN BROWN,

MORTON B. HOWELL.

A list of the names of the men who have followed the profession of the law in the State of Tennessee during the century of its existence would be regarded by the members of this association with keen interest. To know the birthplace, the pedigree, and the achievements of each one, and his ultimate end, would be both pleasant and profitable.

Bolingbroke, the St. John immortalized by Pope in the first line of his "Essay on Man," said: "I have read somewhere or other, in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think, that history is philosophy teaching by example." A hundred and fifty years afterwards, Carlyle wrote: "Examine history, for it is philosophy teaching by experience." "History is the essence of innumerable biographies."

A knowledge of what transpired in the lives of these predecessors of the Tennessee bar would constitute a body of philosophy as valuable and instructive as any treatise we possess.

Fragments of this history have been at various times and in different places rescued from oblivion, but not in such form as -to be readily accessible. The profession owes thanks to Mr. Caldwell, of Knoxville, for his lately published "Sketches of Bench and Bar." Many of the men of whom these sketches treat owe their places in the book not to the fact that they were lawyers, but they were politicians or public men, employed in the councils of the nation. The difficulties encountered in endeavoring to preserve biographies of lawyers who were not otherwise distinguished, are too numerous to allow such a work to ever be accomplished. The author referred to says that "three different documents relating to one judge give each a different date for his death." And he properly remarks that "there have

been scores of lawyers in the State" whose lives should have been written, "but it has been impossible to procure the materials."

In spite of the quips and gibes common in the mouths of people, generally, concerning the shortcomings of lawyers, there is everywhere a well founded and firm conviction that, as a class, they are the best men in the State. If it were required that the most useful and valuable individual in any community should be selected, the lot would be most likely to fall upon the venerable and quiet practitioner of law whose advice and aid had been sought in varied straits and distresses involving both character and property, and through whose efforts many a closet containing family skeletons had been kept securely fastened.

It is not proposed to institute a comparison as to the respective values to society of the members of the several professions. When Vorger said: "Yes, I thank God I am as honest as any man living-that is, an old man, and no honester than I," Dogberry cut him off with the remark that "Comparisons are odious." Yet, all things considered, the lawyer has the advantage of all of them in opportunity.

It falls to him to learn and know what would be commuricated to no other man, to be the depository of all manner of confidences in regard to trivial and vital affairs. This fact alone would not make him, necessarily, a good man, but he is himself under stricter regimen. While he preserves inviolate the secrets of his clients, his own action and conduct are public and unconcealed. He is the only man who cannot do his work continuously alone. There is always another lawyer specially employed to watch him, and to pounce upon and expose the least departure on his part from fact or law. Constant subjection to inspection and review creates a good soldier out of the raw and clumsy recruit, and similar discipline is liable to convert into a man of probity one who has it in his heart to do wrong if he dared.

Society has many legally honest men; that is, whose conscience, or the lack of it, would permit an entrance into things morally illegitimate, but who are restrained by the imminent.

danger of exposure and punishment. Long continuance in any course of action creates habit, which is second nature, and thus, even out of individuals inclined to evil disposition, the practice of law creates good citizens who pass for honest men.

With capacity to produce this effect upon natures originally bad, the influence of the profession when exerted upon noble and pure minds is of momentous force. The man originally good sees new ways to become better. Every day furnishes him fresh insight into the motives of human conduct and additional incentives to his own right action. Thus, the honest and capable lawyer becomes the best citizen, the purest man in thought as well as deed, and the most influential element in the community in which he lives.

What has been said is not intended to apply to the brilliant advocate and skillful orator whose eloquence makes listening juries hang upon his tongue and render verdicts which their consciences do not approve. The person in mind is the sober, sensible, everyday lawyer who passes in and out daily among his people; who advises his clients as to their business affairs; who sees the beginnings of neighborhood troubles and promptly puts an end to them; who detects the approach of family quarrels and feuds, and by timely action nips them in the bud. He is not a great man, as the world calls it, nor does his fame go abroad in the land. But when the solid sum of his quiet and unheralded good deeds is put into the balance against the glittering glory of the eloquent speaker who is nothing more, it is sure to hoist the latter high into the air.

Men of this class create little flutter in the world. No trumpet is sounded before them while they live, but when they have passed away the void created is soon observed and always difficult to fill. There have been many members of the bar in Tennessee who were entitled to be ranked in this noble category. They are dropping silently out of life, and, though it may be that their places are being filled by worthy successors, it is to be lamented that too often no attempt is made to preserve the record of their example. It is so in the world of nature everywhere that the

things most important and essential are for the most part least observed. It is only the man who has violated a law of nature, and become diseased, whose attention is called to the fact that he possesses a liver. The beautiful and fragrant flower of the violet, universally admired, is barren, while the blossom which produces seed and thus keeps up the succession of its kind, remains hidden in the foliage, and quickly buries itself in the earth, there to perform its appointed work. All the beneficent forces of nature are similarly silent and retiring. The cloudburst, the storm, the lightning, are grand, imposing, sublime, but their mission is not progress or life, but ruin and destruction.

These remarks have suggested themselves in considering the life of the lawyer whose memory it is the purpose of this paper to revive, and, so far as I can, to make green.

James Stephen Brown was born at Paris, Tenn., on September 2, 1832. His family had moved to that place from Williamson county, of which both his father, John Lapsley Bown, and his mother, Mary Jane Barfield, were natives. When he was but six months old, his father visited New Orleans in connection with his business as a merchant, and while there fell a victim to the cholera then raging, and he was thus left to the sole care of bis mother. He received his primary education at the Paris Academy, under the tuition of Dávid Cochran, a famous teacher of that day, and he was then sent to Bethel College, at McLemoresville. In this institution he continued the studious habits acquired at the academy, and he graduated with the honors of the college. He then entered Center College, at Danville, Ky., and there also graduated at the head of his class.

Such were his scholarly attainments and such his reputation amongst the men of learning connected with these schools, that, upon his graduation, though just arrived at his majority, he was offered the chair of natural science in Bethel College. This position he accepted, and for several years filled it with honor to himself and profit to the institution and its students.

While a college professor, on February 16, 1854, he married Miss Elizabeth T. Harrell, who still survives.