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public place to enact suitable legislation. Bar Associations have attempted to cure almost all of the ills from which the administration of justice in our courts is now suffering but the people can't be expected to devise remedies, and legislatures and Congress don't take a very active interest. By associating with yourselves laymen you have formed a contact which ought to be useful in enlisting the sympathy of the people themselves and thus influencing legislators to enact beneficial laws. Agitation by Chambers of Commerce, Merchants Associations, Credit Associations and other similar bodies that you can interest, would do great good, and particularly in such a matter as the administration of the bankruptcy law, in which either we must have a vast improvement or the people will demand that we get along without any law. Not long before I came to the bar the Bankruptcy Law of 1867 had been repealed. It had been enacted after the Civil War and it had served its purpose. But then as now abuses crept in and as the best way to cure them the law was repealed; and that has been the history of every bankruptcy law that has ever been passed in this country. If the machinery of the present bankruptcy law cannot be reformed, we shall have to face the facts and consider whether the time has not come for its repeal.

Now one word more about law reform. I doubt whether the newspapers are making the administration of our system of law easier. Indeed, I fear that the inadequacy of newspaper reports of judicial proceedings tends to impair the confidence of the people in the courts. It certainly does not enhance their respect for the manner in which judicial proceedings are conducted. By sane cooperation with public spirited lawyers this condition

could be improved and there are signs that this may be brought about. In the meantime there is some difference of opinion among journalists upon this point. At a conference of Bar Association Delegates in Philadelphia last summer this subject was discussed by lawyers and newspaper men. Dr. Talcott Williams, Director Emeritus of the Pulitzer School of Journalism, Columbia University, attributed the inadequacy of newspaper reports of judicial proceedings to the fact that reporters were not furnished adequate facilities in court and he made the suggestion that the state should pay an officer versed in the law and with newspaper experience, to make an authentic report of trials, subject to revision by some responsible officer of the court. The expense of equipping every court in this country with an official to supply accurate news to the newspapers would be enormous. That it would not be justified was made plain by a colleague of Dr. Williams, Mr. Yost, the editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and the President of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, who said that the newspapers did not concern themselves with a great majority of cases; that not more than one out of ten was reported; that less than one in a hundred received extended notice, and that only one in a thousand reached "the altitude of a sensation." But I realize that this is a difficult subject and that the adjustment of the exigencies of journalism to some method by which the public may be furnished with a correct idea of proceedings in court needs the coöperation of the bar and the press. But there is one direction in which the press could be useful and of which I never weary of reminding newspaper men, and that is that the newspapers do more than they now do to promote projects of reform in our

law and its administration. The press is the most powerful agency to stimulate public opinion upon the subject. But its efforts are perfunctory, frequently critical and rarely constructive. Editors are beginning to take the matter up, and last summer at Philadelphia at the Conference of Bar Association Delegates, already referred to, a resolution was adopted for the appointment of a committee of representatives of the press and a committee of lawyers to consider the whole subject, and particularly to bring the professions of journalism and of the law into closer contact so that "through mutual helpfulness there can come about a better understanding of the functions of the two professions and the ethical conceptions which should govern the conduct of their members." Let us hope that this cooperation may produce salutary results.

XV

ADDRESS BEFORE THE ONTARIO BAR ASSOCIATION*

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Ontario Bar Association:

I have the great honor to present to you the greetings of the American Bar Association, an organization composed of many thousands of American lawyers residing in all parts of the United States, and of the State Bar Association of New York. For many years no important meeting of the New York State Bar Association or the American Bar Association has been complete without the attendance of leaders of the profession in Canada. The interchange of thought between the bar of the two countries has had an elevating and lasting influence for good.

While American lawyers as a part of their training must pay attention to the historical development of law, I venture to say thai ninety-nine per cent of them are as ignorant as I was when I received your invitation, of the fact that English law was introduced into Virginia two hundred years ago. And one of the things which induced me to accept your courteous invitation was to satisfy my curiosity as to why the Ontario Bar Association should be commemorating the fact that old Governor Spotswood in 1710 brought over to the Commonwealth of Virginia the writ of habeas corpus. However, there

* Delivered at Toronto on February 10, 1921.

were probably in that Colony at that time a good many people who needed the beneficent protection of that writ; and I find on some little research that not the least of these was a considerable body of so-called attorneys whose activities in the mother country had led them to seek refuge in Virginia.

I am delighted to renew my associations with Canada. For fifteen years I had a house on the north shore of the lower St. Lawrence, under the shadows of the Laurentian Hills. I navigated some of the unexplored streams that flow into Lake St. John from the north. I came to know the simplicity, the candor and the sturdiness of the two principal races who inhabit your great country. I knew Johnnie Courteau. I have been under the spell of the romance of your woods, your streams and your lakes. And I feel that I know you Canadians so well that I can talk with some candor. Recently there has been an ardent discussion of Canadian affairs in some of our American newspapers, particularly concerning your weather. I think it was caused by the experience of the balloonists who discovered that you sometimes have snow here. Then there are some who think the United States is always reaching out to bring Canada within its governmental system. A professor in one of your great universities goes so far as to write a serious essay upon "Canada as a Vassal State" and solemnly proceeds to argue that in journalism, movies, capital and labor, universities, sports, and, generally speaking, in habits and customs, Canada is nothing more than "nine more states not yet brought formally under control of Washington." But nothing could be wider of the mark.

We have all kinds of societies in the United States for charitable, social, professional, political, inter

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