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the Legislature adjourns without action; and that goes on year after year.

I busied myself for years in the Senate of the United States in trying to get through reforms in procedure that had been discussed and recommended over and over again by The American Bar Association. Quite often I would get a favorable report from the Judiciary Committee; but always there was some little difficulty which prevented their being enacted into law, and the trouble is plain that the motive power behind the demand for reform is not strong enough. You get the real motive power of a people that demand reform behind the demand and no little hitch will occur in the Legislature, either of the State or of the Nation.

But while we are all for reform, we are mildly for reform; we don't put any beef behind it, we don't put any power behind it. Nobody is in danger of being run over by it if he gets in the way. That is the trouble with the demands for reform of judicial procedure, civil and criminal, because almost anyone in the State Legislature or the National Congress can stand in the way and stop it without danger of consequences to himself."

In behalf of the American Bar Association, and as a member of the Committee on Jurisprudence and Law Reform, three or four years ago I presented with extended argument, bills to accomplish needed reforms at hearings of the Judiciary Committee of the House and of the Senate. They were received with apparent approval. But they attracted little attention from the press, favorable or adverse, and they have since appeared to be sleeping the sleep of death.

Law reform, therefore, is a matter which the people can have if they want it. But the responsibility does not rest upon the unorganized general public. If democracy is to be successful, agencies competent to in

struct and lead public sentiment must assume responsibility. The most powerful agency of that kind is the press. If it should unite its efforts to those of the lawyers, useful results might be anticipated. But if it contents itself with being a mere reporter of news and an occasional commentator, frequently critical, it must bear a large share of the responsibility for the continuance of present conditions.

I do not fail to consider that there are lawyers who, through inertia, or selfishness, cling to technical and occult provisions of law and methods of administration giving opportunity for delay and obstruction, and that they thus increase the necessity for their employment. Fortunately, such lawyers are in a small minority, but with the uninformed public the motives of the entire profession are subject to suspicion and their influence is relatively diminished. As a matter of fact, no group in the community as a whole is so devoted to our institutions, so patriotic in their efforts to maintain them, and so self-sacrificing in devoting their time and attention to the correction of defects and insufficiencies, as the American Bar. But lawyers have no talent for exploitation or advertisement. Indeed, the teachings of their profession militate against methods of publicity freely and honorably resorted to by business combinations of every kind. With the enormous development in industrial matters which has resulted in the increased employment of specialists, fitted by cultural and technical education to meet large problems, the bar has ceased to be the most powerful group in the community, and it no longer wields the influence in public affairs attributed to it by Bryce in his "American Commonwealth," and before him by de Toqueville in his "Democracy in

America." Reforms proposed by the bar can only be effected through force of public opinion, and that can be aroused only through the combined action of business men, educators, professional men, sociologists, publicists, and, above all, an intelligent press.

XI

THE LONDON MEETING OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION*

EIGHTY per cent of the American lawyers who went

to London on the invitation of the four Inns of Court and the Law Society, Incorporated, had never been abroad before. They came from nearly every State of the Union, and they returned deeply impressed with the importance of preserving the principles of the common law and of maintaining relations of amity between the English-speaking nations of the world.

It was an extraordinary pilgrimage. Three thousand one hundred American lawyers gathered in London— about thirty per cent. more than had been expected. The steamship Berengaria carried a thousand of our company with their families, including Mr. Hughes, the president, and many Judges of State and Federal courts, including the Chief Justices of Ohio, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. There were also aboard many of our most representative lawyers.

We arrived in good time on Saturday, July 19th. The secular events of the week commenced on Monday with the most impressive event of the week in Westminster Hall. Nothing can be imagined of a more stately or elevated or significant character than the ceremonies attending the welcome extended to the Amer

1924.

Lecture at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, October 9,

ican lawyers on that morning by the bench and bar of England and Canada. The environment was perfect to recall what our civilization and our system of jurisprudence owe to English history, English traditions and English philosophy of life.

We were in the Hall of William Rufus, built in 1097, destroyed by fire in 1291, and in 1398 provided with a ceiling and roof of vast size and without supporting columns-for centuries the wonder of builders. The great hall now forms a gigantic vestibule to the Houses of Parliament. It was originally a part of the Palace of Westminster, where the Kings resided, and while the structure continues to bear the same name, it has long ceased to be used as a royal residence. It has witnessed every change from the days when the sovereigns themselves as a Court of Requests, administered judicial and political powers alike. Gradually there developed from that Court, the Court of Exchequer, the Court of Kings Bench and the Court of Chancery.

I cannot attempt to recount all of the numerous historical events that have occurred in Westminster Hall during the last thousand years. They are the milestones along the road of development of Anglo-Saxon ideas of civil liberty, which have been the heritage of the American people. A bronze tablet in the floor in the middle of the great Hall marks the place where Warren Hastings was acquitted, after a trial extending through seven years. At a point on the elevated platform, indicated by a bronze plate, Charles I stood when he was condemned to death. In the great Hall Sir Thomas Moore dispensed justice, and here the bodies of Cromwell and Gladstone lay in state. No other place in England stands as a symbol so significant as Westminster Hall of

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