What the legal profession has been to this country, what in spite of the bewildering and unprecedented changes of later years its friends still love to recognize in it, may be seen in the picture drawn by a most intelligent and acute foreign observer, over twothirds of a century ago. I quote from M. de Tocqueville:

"In America there are no nobles or literary men, and the people are apt to mistrust the wealthy. Lawyers consequently form the highest political class and the most cultivated portion of society. They have therefore nothing to gain by innovation, which adds a conservative interest to their natural taste for public honor. If I were asked where I place the American aristocracy I should reply, without hesitation, that it is not among the rich, who are united by no common tie, but that it occupies the judicial bench and bar. . . . In that country we easily perceive how the legal profession is qualified by its attributes, and even by its faults, to neutralize the vices inherent in popular government."

That, gentlemen, referred necessarily and exclusively to what I mentioned a moment ago as the legal profession, quite apart from what under modern conditions, and in the intense life of our great cities, your critics are now apt to talk about as the legal trade. Of the latter no man has written such words and no man has thought of such praise. There is still cherished among our national glories the name of a great lawyer in New Haven, who flourished here a century ago. He is famous for his connection with the law, but he would have been famous without the law. He worked at a trade before he studied law. If he had then pursued the trade of law he might have retained the honor won in other fields, but we should have been prouder to speak of him solely as Roger Sherman, the shoemaker.

Perhaps the contrast between the profession and the very highest form of the trade of law was never more sharply and even exasperatingly drawn than in an old Boston oration, full of the fire and stern ethical exaction of our stormy anti-slavery days. Without approving its bitterness, and without accepting even its implications of principle in their extreme length, I am going to read a short extract from it that may serve you as a summons to the highest and best level of the great profession for which you have been fitting:

"Suppose we stood in that lofty temple of jurisprudence-on either side of us the statues of the great lawyers of every age and clime and let us see what part New England-Puritan, educated, free New England-would bear in the pageant. Rome points to

a colossal figure and says, 'That is Papinian, who, when the Emperor Caracalla murdered his own brother, and ordered the lawyer to defend the deed, went cheerfully to death rather than sully his lips with the atrocious plea.' France stretches forth her grateful hands, crying, 'That is D'Aguesseau, worthy, when he went to face an enraged King, of the farewell his wife addressed him-Go! forget that you have a wife and children to ruin, and remember only that you have France to save.' England says, "That is Coke, who flung the laurels of eighty years in the face of the first Stuart, in the defence of the people. This is Selden, on every book of whose library you saw written the motto of which he lived worthy, Before everything Liberty! That is Mansfield, silver-tongued, who proclaimed, Slaves cannot breathe in England. . . . This is Romilly, who spent life trying to make law synonymous with justice, and succeeded in making life and property safer in every city of the empire. . . That is Erskine, whose eloquence, in spite of Lord Eldon and George III, made it safe to speak and to print.'

"Then New England shouts, "This is Choate, who made it safe to murder; and of whose health thieves asked before they began to steal.'"

Unjust to the lawyer no doubt it was, but as an estimate of what some walks of the law may be made, it is mordant and ineffaceable.

In that lofty Valhalla of which Mr. Phillips spoke, consecrated to the stern and awful figure of Justice herself, and peopled only by the sons of your profession whose conspicuous service approved them worthy to worship at her shrine-in that noble company, I say, you will look in vain for the statue of the modern "ambulancechaser" or any species of the modern speculative damage-suit lawyer. Far less will you find the tradesman in litigation who has found ways to combine champerty and maintenance with safe standing in the courts. Nay, you will not even find there that sort of brilliant corporation lawyer whose practice is confined to teaching corporate wealth how to evade the laws of the land; or that other whose practice lies in teaching trades unions how to conduct campaigns against property without imperilling their own incomes, and campaigns against free labor by terrorism, by the bludgeon, by dynamite, without incurring responsibility for such deeds, while enjoying the victory they secure. Few, perhaps, in any law school or in any age may hope to reach that lofty company, the nobles of your truly aristocratic profession, the laureates of

the law; but better far fall short on that upward and shining professional path than race to the front in the downward road of the trade.

The Monroe Doctrine.

When Theophilus Parsons undertook the task of training John Quincy Adams to the law, the first book he assigned his pupil was Robertson's "History of Charles V," and the second was Vattel's "Law of Nature and Nations," while Gibbon and Hume came shortly afterward. On the assumption that the range and dignity of law studies have not suffered at the hands of this great New England university since the days of that eminent New England lawyer, I make no apologies for now proceeding to invite the attention of the Yale Law School to certain recent aspects of public policy and international law, rather than to topics more directly related to current law practice. I wish to speak to you about the Monroe Doctrine, the Polk Doctrine, and Anarchism.

To the average American the Monroe Doctrine seems so natural and necessary that he is always surprised at the surprise with which the pretension is regarded by Europe. Not one of our citizens out of a thousand has any doubt of its propriety or of our duty to maintain it. The slightest show of foreign opposition would call a practically unanimous country to its defence.

At the same time there is no very intimate familiarity with the circumstances of its origin, or the varying scope we have given it, and little attention has been paid to the changed conditions that must now affect its application. Considered at present merely in the old light, as a barrier against the reactionary designs of the Holy Alliance upon the new republics we had just recognized in the American continents at the close of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, its condition somewhat resembles that of a long-neglected barrel around which has accumulated the debris of years. The hoops, the thing that made it a barrel, have dropped away; only the pressure of the debris outside holds the staves together. Remove that and the barrel would tumble to pieces. Keep up the outside pressure and it may last indefinitely.

I do not say that the illustration exactly fits the case, or that the Monroe Doctrine would disappear if Europe ceased to oppose it. I do say that under a show of European opposition it would be likely to last indefinitely; and that in a long absence of such opposition it may hold together less tenaciously. The things that made the Monroe Doctrine have disappeared:-the danger that the infant republics should be strangled by their cruel stepmother

and her allies; that the Holy Alliance should check the spread of republican institutions or overturn them in any place where they deserve to exist; or that Europeans should attempt now, under the shadow of the United States of the Twentieth Century, to colonize alleged unoccupied lands in America. Under such circumstances it may be easy, after a while, for us to look over the Monroe Doctrine again in the light of the present situation of the American continents and of our present necessities. We will certainly not abandon it; but we may find, if nobody is opposing us, that perhaps its extension, quite so far beyond the original purpose of Mr. Monroe and Mr. Adams as the fervor of our patriots has carried it, may prove to be attended with wholly unnecessary inconvenience to ourselves.

For the sake of precision it may be well at the beginning to restate a few facts about it, not always remembered. The Doctrine is not International Law. It is not American Law. It consists merely of declarations of policy by Presidents and Secretaries of State, and these are not uniform. There is a Monroe Doctrine, suggested in part by Mr. Canning, extended and formulated by Mr. John Quincy Adams, and adopted by Mr. Monroe, in his message to Congress of December 2, 1823. There is a Polk Doctrine, starting in disputes about our northwestern frontier and in an intrigue of the slave power for the seizure and annexation of Yucatan, collaborated by Mr. James Buchanan and his chief, and adopted by Mr. Polk, in his messages to Congress of December 2, 1845, and April 29, 1848. The Monroe Doctrine held that (1) "the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power"; and (2) that, as "the political system of the allied powers is essentially different . . . from that of America . . . with the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power [in America] we have not interfered and shall not interfere; but with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it... we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any European power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." The second of these propositions was the one suggested and cordially welcomed by Great Britain; the first was met by instant dissent. Both, though resting wholly on the presidential declaration, without a statute or resolution of Congress to sustain

them, have become incorporated into the general American faith. But neither of them declares against any but republican institutions for the future in this hemisphere;-in fact, about the same time we were recognizing two Emperors, Iturbide in Mexico and Dom Pedro in Brazil. Neither of them objects to transfer of dominion to Europeans by cession, purchase or the voluntary act of the inhabitants; and neither of them gives any pledge to any South American State that we would interfere in its behalf against the use of force for the collection of debts or the redress of injuries, or indeed against any European attack.

The Polk Doctrine, starting from Mr. Monroe's The Polk Doctrine. statement about colonization, says (1) "it should be distinctly announced to the world as our settled policy that no future European colony or dominion shall, with our consent, be planted or established on any part of the North American continent"; and again, quoting Mr. Monroe as opposing the extension of the European system to this hemisphere, Mr. Polk says (2) "while it is not my purpose to recommend . . . the acquisition of the dominion and sovereignty over Yucatan, yet we could not consent to a transfer of this dominion and sovereignty to either Spain, Great Britain or any other European power." Thus, professing only to reaffirm the Monroe Doctrine, the Polk Doctrine extends it to forbid specifically the establishment or acquisition of dominion anywhere in North America, and inferentially anywhere in this hemisphere, by any European power.* Not merely are these powers forbidden to claim unsettled lands and colonize them, or to interfere with the liberties of the Spanish-American republics

*Gen. Grant restated the Polk Doctrine even more specifically, (without reference, however, to Mr. Polk) in his letter to the Senate of May 31st, 1870, concerning his plan for annexing San Domingo, as follows:

"The Doctrine promulgated by President Monroe has been adhered to by all political parties, and I now deem it proper to assert the equally important principle that hereafter no territory on this continent shall be regarded as subject of transfer to a European power."

Mr. Cleveland carried it so far in the Venezuelan matter in his special message of December 17th, 1895, as to propose appointing a Commission to determine the disputed boundary between Great Britain and Venezuela, and resisting, by every means in our power "the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction over any territory which * * * we have determined * * belongs to Venezuela."

Both these utterances are quite outside the original scope of the Monroe Doctrine, and are merely variations or extensions of the Polk Doctrine.

And finally the representatives of the United States at the Hague Peace