When I received your gracious invitation to come and address you at this your annual meeting, I hesitated to accept; not that I failed in any degree to appreciate the honor implied in the invitation, but because of the uncertainty I felt as to the interest or importance of the message I might be able to bring to you, as a member of the bar of the neighboring country. But reflection convinced me that I could best acquit myself by speaking to you as I should do to a Bar Association of one of the States of our own Union. I never have been able to regard Canada as a foreign country. We are children of a common mother. We derive our conceptions of law and justice from the same fount of the common law. Our two countries but recently fought side by side in the greatest conflict in history, in defence of the application to the affairs of nations of the same fundamental principles of justice as obtain between man and man. In that struggle, Canada was forever consecrated to our hearts and minds by her heroic achievements and by the bounteous sacrifice of her best blood, in order that governments based upon the free will of free peoples might endure upon this earth.

Naturally, as I thought of meeting your Association here to-day, I reflected upon the nature of our common profession, its problems, its duties, its opportunities. I reflected upon the great part the Bar has played in the history of the English-speaking peoples, and it seemed to me that I could do no better than to invite you to consider with me for a moment, the duties and opportunities of the Bar to-day, in my country as well as in yours.

Our problems are not unlike. The stronger organization of your Bar, with the authority conferred upon it by law, gives it certain

Address delivered before the annual meeting of the Ontario Bar Association, at Toronto, May 23, 1924.

C.B.R. VOL. II.-37

advantages over ours. In some directions you have advanced further than we have. In general, I venture to think, the attitude of the Bar towards the community and the attitude of the people towards the Bar differs in no very great degree in Canada from that in the United States. If individual lawyers have less influence with the public to-day than they enjoyed a century ago, the influence of the organized Bar is greater and is increasing.

There is in the United States a growing tendency of lawyers to organize in associations, local, state and national, for purposes more or less the same as those expressed in your own Constitution, namely: "to improve the administration of justice, to uphold the honor and dignity of the profession of the law, and to promote friendly intercourse among members of our common profession."

Aside from some early and sporadic examples, organizations of this character date from the formation of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York in 1869, for the purpose of driving unworthy judges from the bench, and redeeming the administration of justice from corrupt corporate influences and especially from the domination of the Tweed ring. The Association was incorporated a year or so later, in April, 1871, by act of the Legislature, for the expressed purpose "of maintaining the honor and dignity of the profession of the law, of cultivating social relations among its members and of increasing its usefulness in promoting the due administration of justice."

The creation of this Association was the result of an awakened sense of corporate responsibility on the part of the lawyers of New York, for the continued existence of conditions which made a mockery of the whole conception of government under laws honestly administered by courts presided over by learned and upright judges. Seldom, if ever, in the history of America have such conditions existed as then obtained in New York, and never has the Bar better vindicated its high functions than in the various steps taken by the collective action of the Bar against the corrupt political and judicial powers of that time. Lord Bryce, in his chapter on Tammany rule in New York City, in "The American Commonwealth," described the origin and progress of a corrupt organization, which oozed up from the slime of local politics and gradually enveloped the government of the city with malignant power; while Charles Francis Adams, the younger, in a little book published in October, 1869, entitled "A Chapter of Erie," recorded the history of the unholy alliance of certain judges with a group of speculators who had obtained control of a great railway, and used that control to corruptly manipulate markets and rob the public.

Reviewing the conditions as they then existed, Mr. Adams said, they revealed to every observant eye the deep decay which had eaten into our social edifice.

"No portion of our system," he wrote, "was left untested and no portion showed itself to be sound. The Stock Exchange revealed itself as a haunt of gamblers and a den of thieves; the offices of one great corporation appeared as the chambers in which trustees plotted the spoilation of their wards; the law became a ready engine for the furtherance of wrong, and the ermine of the judge did not conceal the eagerness of the partisan; the halls of legislation were transformed into a mart in which the price of votes was higgled over, and laws, made to order, were bought and sold; while under all and through all, the voice of public opinion was silent or was disregarded."

These words were written and published in 1869. No wonder that the conditions Mr. Adams described filled him with ominous forebodings of the future. Yet even as he wrote, the awakening of an outraged public sentiment was at hand, and within less than two years, three corrupt judges were expelled from the bench, and Tweed and the members of his ring were driven into exile or brought to justice. Never since that time has the public conscience been sunk into like apathy and, despite corrupt and disgraceful lapses from time to time, never since then has such wholesale dishonesty prevailed in any branch of our government. From that day onwards, the Bar has felt and acted upon an increasing consciousness of its responsibilities as well as its influence. Its power as a civic force steadily has grown, as the lawyers of the country have combined, in city, county, state and national organizations, increasingly recognizing their responsibility for good government, and above all, for the administration of justice. Remarking with regret the apparent decline in the influence of the legal profession, Lord Bryce wrote, in "The American Commonwealth":

"Their influence is still great when any question arises on which the profession or the more respectable part of it, stands together. Many bad measures have been defeated in state legislatures by the action of the Bar, many bad judicial appointments averted. Their influence strengthens the respect of the people for the Constitution, and is felt by the judges when they are called to deal with public questions. But taking a general survey of the facts of to-day, as compared with those of the middle of the last century, it is clear that the Bar counts for less as a guiding and restraining power, tempering the crudity or haste of democracy by its attachment to rule and precedent than it did then.”

The reasons for this decline in influence are not far to seek. The great expansion of industry and the rapid growth and increasing wealth of great corporate organizations drew the ablest lawyers away from the courts and from public service, into the employ of corporations and other great private interests, while, on the other hand, the widening circulation of great newspapers created a new and ever extending means of influencing public thought, which superseded the voice alike of the Pulpit and the Bar.

Nevertheless, lawyers still preponderate in our Congress and our State legislatures; our Presidents, twice out of three times, are of the legal profession, and the sentiment of the organized Bar steadily is moving back towards a position of greater influence upon the thought and action of our communities.

This influence increases in proportion as it is demonstrated to be exerted for unselfish purposes and towards lofty ends. It is made apparent in efforts to improve the efficiency and maintain the high character of the Bench; in ridding the Bar of unworthy members, and in raising the standards of fitness and character as conditions. to admission to the Bar. It is exerted increasingly in improving the quality of legislation, and in bringing about greater uniformity in the statute laws of the different states of the Union, as well as in efforts to clarify and simplify the common law, in reforming judicial procedure, and in grappling with the various conditions which are responsible for undue delays in the administration of justice. A few illustrations will support this statement.

In the early days of the Republic, laws were comparatively simple; education for the practice of the law was obtained through the study of a few standard text books, such as the Commentaries of Blackstone and Kent and Story, Stephen's Treatise on the Law of Pleading, Greenleaf on Evidence, and Parsons on Contracts, with the aid of casual instruction in the offices of practicing attorneys. If scientific education were lacking, the student had the great advantage of acquiring familiarity with accurate drafting and exact legal expression by copying papers in his preceptor's office. He also enjoyed the advantage of close acquaintance with older lawyers, and, in many instances, the privilege of serving under the direct influence of some inspiring personality. Moreover, almost from the beginning of his apprenticeship, he made the acquaintance of the court and its attendant offices, through the daily discharge of the ordinary duties connected with litigation, which at that time constituted the larger part of the practice of the law. He constantly attended the trial of cases in court, and learned there the best methods of preparation and tria!.

This sort of schooling sufficed to make a fair sort of trial lawyer. Later experience made him something more.

"Whether it be a calamity or not," Mr. Stirling Taylor recently observed, "there is no denying the fact that the English mind does not give much time to considering the fundamental principles of law. . . Our jurists have been craftsmen rather than theorists."

On the other hand, Dean Pound, in a recent lecture, says:

"One has but to read the proceedings of our Bar Associations to perceive the revival of faith in the efficacy of effort, which is in marked contrast with the juristic pessimism of a generation ago.

"Interest in the philosophy of law, which was the foundation of legal studies when Marshall and Kent and Story were preparing for the bar, is notably reviving in all English-speaking lands."

I confess to a doubt whether or not there was much interest in the philosophy of law in America at the time referred to by Dean Pound. Certainly, Marshall felt none of it. His studies before admission to the bar were of the most superficial character. Mr. Beveridge says of him:

"He had practically no equipment except his intellect, his integrity, and his gift for inspiring confidence and friendship. learning in the law he had almost none at all. He had read Blackstone, although not thoroughly, but the only legal training that Marshall had received was acquired during his few weeks' training at William and Mary College."

Neither Kent nor Story had done much more. Besides, Blackstone and Coke on Littleton, the former read Grotius, Pufendorf and Hale's History of the Common Law. But I have looked in vain for evidence of any general interest or instruction in the philosophy of law during the period covered by the apprenticeship of Marshall, Story or Kent. True, there was great interest in political economy and in the science of government, but the Common Law, as Blackstone expounded it, was accepted as the ultimate expression of justice and

reason.

What the present Attorney-General of the United States, the Honourable Harlan F. Stone, said in his address before this Association in 1922, was as true of the time when Marshall, Story and Kent were pursuing their studies for the Bar as in the centuries preceding, namely that the genius of the English-speaking people found expression in the law which was forged between the hammer and anvil of opposing counsel in the trial of controversies in court, rather than in the study of principles of jurisprudence by scholars in libraries. or in universities.