practice the patient effort necessary to successfully pass an adequate examination, will be very unlikely to so conduct himself, after reaching the goal of his ambition, as to bring discredit upon himself.

If you will bear with me but yet a little longer, a suggestion or two concerning the duty of a lawyer to himself and to the State and public interests may be pertinent. There is no necessity, I take it, to urge in the South, more than there is in my own State, the lawyer to take his part in political affairs. The proverbial fondness of the duck for water is not an inapt comparison to the readiness with which the average attorney assumes his armor for political warfare. This tendency upon our part cannot be well checked. Nevertheless, I am far from sure that this is an advantage either to us as individuals, or for the best interest of good government. On the contrary, I am apprehensive that this too prevailing practice among lawyers is a private and a public injury. The lawyer, as a rule, enters public life too young. Office-especially legislative honor-is sought for, and regarded as a stepping-stone for professional advancement, rather than as a result of successful achievements at the Bar. We are disposed to think and to act upon the idea that the notoriety and the acquaintanceship of public life will enlarge our clientage rather than to adopt a slower method to success through a reputation earned by laborious work in the courts and in the office.

The result to ourselves as individuals is that we forever lose the golden opportunities of the earlier years of practice to lay up in our minds those stores of legal principles and learning which will enrich all our later efforts. We consume the precious hours which should be given to hard study, when clients are few and cases infrequent-when the time is abundant to thoroughly master every precept and principle with which the simplest case will abound, and when the mind is capable of receiving indelible impressions, in the petty and often unremunerative strifes of local politics. I verily believe that the young lawyers of to-day are not sufficiently apprehensive of the privileges of those days of waiting for business, which are, in too many cases, utterly wasted, not in indolence, but in the misdirection of effort. The train bearing the aspirations of promis

ing lives is side-tracked, not infrequently forever, and the vigorous energies of youth applied to valueless efforts of a temporary character, and then after the vital forces are exhausted, and the attempt is made to move forward upon the main track for the original destination, the machinery has become rusted and the rich freightage of hope has lost its priceless buoyancy. How suggestive in this connection is the anecdote of Webster, told by Harvey in his reminiscences of the great expounder of the Constitution. In the first year of his professional life a blacksmith called on him for advice respecting the title to a small estate bequeathed to him by his father; the terms of the will were peculiar, and the kind of estate transmitted doubtful.

Mr. Webster examined the case, but was unable to give a definite opinion for want of authorities. Then living in New Hampshire, he looked through the law libraries of Jeremiah Mason and other lawyers for authorities, but in vain. He ascertained what authorities he needed for consultation, and ordered them from Boston at an expense of fifty dollars. He spent the leisure hours of several weeks in going through them. He successfully argued and won the cause. His client was poor-his little all had been at stake-and Mr. Webster only charged him fifteen dollars. Years passed away, and the case was forgotten, but not the treasured knowledge by which it was won. On one of his journeys to Washington he spent a few days in New York, and while there was waited upon by Aaron Burr for advice in a very important case then pending in the State Court. Mr. Webster, upon learning the facts, saw in a moment that it was the exact counterpart of his blacksmith will case, and at once proceeded to state the law applicable, and to quote precedents bearing on the case, going back even to the time of Charles II. As he went on with his array of principles and authorities, all cited with the precision and order of a table of contents, Mr. Burr arose in astonishment and asked with some warmth:

"Mr. Webster, have you been consulted before in this case?" "Most certainly not," he replied, "I never heard of your case till this evening."

Mr. Webster received from Mr. Burr the warmest praise for his knowledge of the law, and a fee large enough to remunerate him for all the time and trouble spent in the blacksmith case.

It is not for every young lawyer, even with the determined. application and devotion to the most jealous mistress in the world-the law-to become a Webster, a Marshall, or a Story. But how much richer would our profession be in attainment, in character, and even in honor, if its members would give up the days, and nights too, of the first five or ten years of practice to faithful communing with the principles and precedents of the law rather than the, perhaps, more attractive allurements of the hustings or the legislative forum. The influence would be felt through the whole profession. The more accomplished a Bar the greater the average ability which will of necessity come into it with its yearly increase of new blood. Then there will be no place for the laggard or the unfaithful. Clients will seek the capable, and the incapable be relegated so far to the rear that the profession will never hear of them.

If the lawyer does not learn the principles and the great foundation precedents which have established principles when young, he rarely ever will, and principle and precedent are the lawyer's treasures. The statutes and the Code are every man's property, and no cautious practitioner will try to carry the provisions of either in his mind. Safe advice founded upon either must be given directly after inspection of the book itself, but prompt, reliable service, when the sudden emergency comes, can only be obtained from a memory well stored and faithfully cultivated in the waiting, briefless days of a lawyer's life. So much for the influence on the individual of a too early entry of a lawyer into public life. More deleterious yet is the effect upon the community itself. The lawyer is of inestimable value as a public official, especially in the law-making bodies of State and National Government.

But to serve efficiently and not disastrously there he should come prepared to teach the law, and not as a learner. When, if ever, we shall reach the period when a seat in the Legislature is the reward of a busy, studious, and successful experience in practice, and not the method by which a practice is to

be won, then will there be less legislation, and what there is of a better quality.

I do not forget, however, that in framing statutes the wisest and most painstaking jurist may go astray. Judge Story, in the zenith of his fame, was employed by Congress to draft an important law, and spent six months in trying to perfect its phraseology so that its sense should be clear beyond the shadow of a doubt, and not the smallest loophole remain for a lawyer to creep through. And yet, in less than a year, after hearing the arguments of two able attorneys, he was utterly unable, in a suit which came before him as a Judge of the Supreme Court, to decide upon the statute's meaning. If further argument was needed this anecdote strengthens the position that the law-maker, so far as he is a lawyer, should be a man not only of ability, but with careful training and experience.

May I trouble you with one further suggestion? The position which the lawyer occupies as a citizen is most influential. From the earliest period of recorded history the profession has, throughout the centuries, proved itself a strong, conservative element, and at the same time been most efficient in promoting the progress of humanity to higher, and continually higher, elevations of happiness. Study well the character of the world's memorable revolutions-Roman, French, English, even our own --and in each and every one of them is manifest the guidance of the master intellects in our beloved profession, checking with their conservative instincts the too radical impulses natural to large masses of men in political agitation, and at the same time, and at auspicious moments, and in practical and lawful directions, impelling popular effort toward securing a better condition in social and governmental relations.

Time will not permit the indulgence of lingering amid the illustrations which throng upon our memories, but I am never, when I allow myself to wander in pleasing reminiscence through the glorious achievements of the honored names which adorn the story of the Bar and illumine the pages of all history, unmindful of the noble words of Erskine, in his speech in the trial of Thomas Paine :

"I will forever, at all hazards, assert the dignity, independence, and integrity of the English Bar, without which impar

tial justice, the most valuable part of the English Constitution, can have no existence. From the moment that any advocate can be permitted to say that he will or will not stand between the Crown and the subject arraigned in the Court, where he daily sits to practice, from that moment the liberties of England are at an end. If the advocate refuses to defend from what he may think of the charge or the defense, he assumes the character of the judge-nay, he assumes it before the hour of judgment-and, in proportion to his rank and reputation, puts the heavy influence of perhaps a mistaken opinion into the scale against the accused, in whose favor the benevolent principle of English law makes all presumptions, and which command the very judge to be his counsel."

My friends, we are not living in a period of apparent revolution. This is the era of peace. Our home is a land happy with a prosperous, a peaceful, and a united people. It is my most earnest wish, to which no one here will not most cordially respond, that these days may continue, and that the evil days come not forever. Notwithstanding, I am confident, from my reading the signs of the day, I will not say the portentous indications of the hour, nor speak under pessimistic influences, that in the not far distant future all the nerve, all the historic vigor and conservative power of our profession will be recalled to turn from destructive courses and to impell in safe pathways the tendencies of our fellow-countrymen. It is wise, whatever may await the coming of the morrow, that we should take frequent counsel together that we may move with concerted action, and by honorable lives acquire the respect of the people whom our country's safety may require us to guide.

It should be also our aim to become familiar with all the lessons of history, that we may meet emergencies with the aid of experience. Judge Story says: "Governments must change to meet the demands of the times. I have been in public life nearly forty years, and have seen great changes in the country. Men may flatter themselves that now, at least, all is settled; but no, our laws are written upon the sands of time, and the winds. of popular opinion gradually efface them; new layers are to be made, and your old writing renewed or changed.”

We number to-day in this country sixty million of people.