direction and consummation of legislation to the final accomplishment of this great work.

Thomas Foley Hisky: I move that the thanks of the Association be tendered to Mr. Caton for his very able and learned paper.

The motion was duly seconded, and after vote, it was declared unanimously carried. ·

Upon motion duly made and seconded, and after vote, the Association adjourned until Friday, July 9th, at 10 o'clock A. M.

MORNING SESSION.

July 9, 1915.

The Association was called to order at 10 o'clock A. M., by the President.

The President: It affords me very great pleasure to introduce to you this morning Hon. Joseph W. Bailey, the subject of whose address will be disclosed as he proceeds.

ADDRESS BY HON. JOSEPH W. BAILEY.

Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Maryland State Bar Association, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I once heard a venerable schoolmaster tell a class of boys that no man ought ever announce to his audience that he had not prepared his speech; because, said he and he said it with an unction which made it plain that he fully appreciated his own wit-the audience will always discover for itself a speaker's lack of preparation. I would follow that good man's admonition this morning, if I alone were concerned, but I feel that in simple justice to your honored President, and to your most efficient Secretary, I ought to explain how it happens that they have brought me here in that state of "unpreparedness," about which we hear so much at this particular time.

My good friend, Congressman Talbott, is responsible for the mistake, and the consequent confusion. He asked me one day to accept an invitation to deliver an address on this occasion; and when I attempted to excuse myself upon the ground that I had planned to leave Washington for Texas in June to spend the summer in the greatest State among the best people in the world-outside of Maryland— he refused to accept my excuse, and insisted that I must come. I yielded, as so many other people have to his persuasion or his command.

But as the days passed and I received no formal invitation, I concluded that under the stress of matters political, and military, Talbott had forgotten all about this meeting of the Maryland State Bar Association, and I went on to Texas. It happened, however, that I was summoned back to Washington on a matter for one of my clients, and then, for the first time, I received the letters from your President

and your Secretary advising me of the day on which it had been arranged for me to speak. Thinking it better to come without any preparation than to leave a vacant place on your program, I came; and I have met such delightful people since coming that I am more loath to go than I was to come. If, before I resume my seat, any of you find reason to regret that I am here, you can take your revenge on Fred. Talbott at the next Congressional election, if you live in his district; (laughter) and if you do not happen to live in his district, you will have an opportunity to punish him sometime during the next twenty-five or thirty years when he offers himself as a candidate for the Senate of the United States. (Laughter.)

I would count it a privilege to meet the lawyers who compose the Bar Association of any State, and I count it a special privilege to meet those who compose the Bar Association of this State; because Maryland occupies a unique position in the history of the American Bar. Other States have produced great lawyers, but it can be said of Maryland-and such a distinction may well intensify your State pride that she has contributed to our profession more of its leaders than all of the other States combined. She began her primacy in that regard almost with the organization of the Supreme Court, when Luther Martin was her spokesman there. With all of his eccentricities, which were many -and some of them were most audacious-Luther Martin was a great lawyer, and he achieved his pre-eminence in spite of habits which would have destroyed any lawyer of less than transcendent ability.

After Martin came Pinkney, who has been described by the historian of the Supreme Court as "the glory of his generation." That is high praise, but it is not higher than Pinkney deserves. Indeed, no praise of Pinkney can seem extravagant, because he was a marvel of intellect and industry. I cannot understand how any man, no matter how

richly endowed, could have served in so many different places, and have distinguished himself in every place to which he was called. When scarcely more than a boy he was a member of the Maryland Convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States; and he was one of that minority which insisted that certain amendments were necessary to properly safeguard the rights and the liberties of our people. Neither Pinkney nor any other member especially distinguished himself in that convention, because it was one of the few which completed its work practically without debate.

Pinkney's service, however, must have been entirely satisfactory to his constituents, because he was chosen the next year to the House of Delegates, and from that body he was transferred, when only twenty-six years old, to the Congress of the United States, from which he resigned because his eligibility had been questioned. He next became a member of Maryland's Executive Council; and from that passed again into the House of Delegates. He was then made one of the Commissioners to London under the Jay Treaty; and in 1805 became the Attorney-General of Maryland. In 1806 and 1807 he was associated with James Monroe in an important diplomatic mission; and from 1807 to 1811 he was our Minister to Great Britain. Returning from abroad in 1811, he entered the Senate of Maryland; and from December, 1811, to February, 1814, he was Attorney-General of the United States. Enlisting in the army, he was wounded at the Battle of Bladensburg, and was then elected for a second time to the Congress of the United States, from which body he a second time resigned to accept the appointment as Minister to the two Sicilies. From 1816 to 1818 he was our Minister to Russia; and in 1819 he was elected to the Senate of the United States, remaining a member of that great assembly until his death in 1822.

This is a record of active and varied service unparalleled in our history, and when you recall it, I am sure that you must wonder, as I do, how in the midst of it all Pinkney ever found time to acquire that mastery of the law which enabled him to win and to hold the undisputed leadership of the American Bar. Of all those different public places only two of them—the Attorney-Generalship of Maryland and the Attorney-Generalship of the United Ctates—necessarily contributed to his professional equipment. I can understand how, during a continuous service in the House of Representatives or in the Senate of the United States, he might have pursued his law studies almost without interruption, and could have practiced his profession without impairing his usefulness as a Representative or a Senator; but I cannot understand how he could discharge the duties of those different places, three of them taking him into foreign countries, and still find the time to sustain, and even to increase, his reputation as a lawyer.

After Pinkney's death in 1822, the sceptre passed from Maryland to Massachusetts, and for the next thirty years Daniel Webster was the leader of the American Bar; or if there was one to dispute that honor, that one was William Wirt, who was Maryland-born, and who after retiring from the Attorney-General's office, returned to his native State to resume the active practice of law in the City of Baltimore.

It is not necessary for me to institute any comparison between Webster and Wirt, or to say that the one rather than the other is entitled to precedence. My own opinion is that as a constitutional lawyer Webster surpassed Wirt, as he surpassed all other men of his day or of any day. I do not mean to say that his constitutional views were sound, but only that he possessed such a thorough knowledge of the Constitution that he was able to impose his construction of it on the courts of his country as no other