ney-General contested against Mr. Evarts the Alabama claims before the Geneva Tribunal of Arbitration, that in one year he realized fifty thousand pounds, but that was adding his compensation as Attorney-General to his large and lucrative private practice, which is not permitted any longer to the Attorney-General or the Solicitor-General. But such earnings there or here represent a prodigious and killing amount of work; and the story is that an old friend desiring an interview with Sir Roundell, called at his chambers one Thursday morning, and asked if he could see him. The clerk replied that if he must he could do so, but he would advise him not to, for he hadn't been in bed since Sunday night. So I have heard of a great Chancery barrister many years later realizing in one year twenty-eight thousand pounds, and during my stay in London thirty thousand pounds a year was the highest sum I heard ascribed to the most successful leaders of the day. Such earnings anywhere represent the absolute devotion of the highest professional qualities and the sacrifice of everything else to the largest interests of the commercial world. These figures compare very favorably with the best I ever knew or heard of, while I was actually engaged in steady practice. Since my return, I have heard of fabulous sums received by lawyers, either as shares agreed upon, or from great corporations or estates, as rewards for very moderate services. For the credit of the profession I decline to believe such stories, for in the long run nothing is so damaging to us as a profession as the spirit of commercialism the Wall street notion, that money is the only thing worth striving for, an idea which when it once gets hold of a man unfits him for true leadership, and when it once gets hold of the profession is sure to demoralize it.

I have no time to discuss here to-day the much vexed question of the comparative merits of legal education here and in England - but from what I have seen of the leading English barristers, what splendid men they are physically, mentally and morally, how learned and broadly educated, accomplished and thoroughly equipped, I should say that the system which has produced such men, the combined results of education at the universities and the great Inns of Court, ought not hastily to be exchanged for another as a training for the English Bar.

Perhaps some day the Inns of Court will combine their splendid resources to create and maintain a great University of Law, to which men of all nations, races and languages will resort for legal training, but although this was strongly urged upon them, I believe by Lord Russell and other prominent benchers, the time for such a serious change has not yet come.

Those splendid Inns of Court to which I have so often referred for it is impossible to speak of English law or English lawyers without constant reference to themafford to our brethren who belong to them and to whom they belong, a home around which their affections centre, and places and occasions of social and fraternal intercourse utterly unknown to us.

As the sole authority through which admission to the Bar can be obtained, as seats of study and learning in preparation for professional life, as the custodians and guardians of all the history and traditions of the law, they command the loyal affection and devotion of all their members. As the great nurseries of the common law and of equity, and identified in their annals with the whole. progress of justice and of civilization in England, established already for centuries, while we were yet a component part of the English nation, I regard them as the

common property and the common pride of all lawyers the world over who speak the English tongue. There our predecessors in the Bar of England have been working out by patient industry, and with ever advancing knowledge those principles which underlie the liberties of England and America alike, and the debt of gratitude we owe them for that long service cannot be overstated. What are those absolute principles which thus lie at the foundation of our common civilization? "That there is no such thing as absolute power, that King, Lords and Commons, Presidents, Congress, Courts and people are alike subject to the law, that before its supreme majesty all men are equal; that no man can be punished or deprived of any of his rights except by the edict of the law pronounced by independent tribunals which are themselves subject to the law; that every man's house is his castle, and though the winds and the storms may enter it, the King or the President cannot; that our government on both sides of the water is in the sublime words of the great Sidney 'a government of laws and not of men.'"

You will not wonder then that in common with all other lawyers I felt an immediate and personal interest in those cradles of the law in which, before America was discovered, those ultimate principles of right and justice which our fathers brought over with Magna Charta and the Petition of Right were brought into being, and already in the way of final establishment.

Those graceful and magnificent halls, rich in beauty and teeming with great traditions, about which the memories of all that has been great and noble in our profession for five centuries still linger, cannot but have an ennobling and inspiring influence upon all who frequent them. The footsteps of American lawyers on arriving in England naturally turn first to them, and often as I haunted them

I always met and heard of my countrymen there before me. Their unbounded hospitality often gladdened my long stay among them. On Grand Night in each term of Court when the Benchers of each Inn assemble within those noble walls to entertain their friends and their members and students, with the portraits of the great judges and lawyers of the past whom they claim as their own looking down upon them, and the shields and arms of their treasurers for centuries surrounding them, they seemed to me to represent and embody the living spirit of our law, holding now for the time being, and for transmission to future generations, all the rich heritage of the past. And when as a tribute to the American Bar and in demonstration of their fraternal sympathy and affection they made me too a Bencher of the Middle Temple, to represent you all, and in the same spirit bade me farewell at Lincoln's and Gray's Inns, I felt that my professional life had not been wholly in vain.

My conclusion, from a fair knowledge of both countries, is that in the law, as in every other element of our common civilization, each nation has yet much to learn from the other, and that to that end we ought studiously on both sides to cultivate more frequent and constant intercourse and a better knowledge of each other, and no profession can do so much as ours to bring about this happy consummation.

I also became thoroughly convinced that for each country its own system of legal administration and of professional life as it stands to-day, is better than any abrupt or violent effort at reform would be. That system for each nation has been slowly evolved out of social usage, and common law and statute in the course of centuries, and any sudden changes would be more likely to mar than to mend it. But we may hope on both sides, by the friendly

interchange of ideas from time to time, to gain much in the way of progress and improvement. (Applause.)

The President:

The report of the Executive Committee will be read by the Secretary.

The Secretary read the report as follows:

ALBANY, N. Y., January 15, 1907.

To the New York State Bar Association:

The Executive Committee respectfully reports as follows:

There were present at the annual meeting, held at the Capitol, in the city of Albany, on the 14th day of January, 1907, the following named members thereof, viz.:

Messrs. Rudd, Keck, Ingalsbe, Ainsworth, Fish, Lewis and Buchanan.

The following mentioned proceedings were had and taken at such meeting:

I. In the absence of Mr. Lewis L. Delafield, Chairman of such Committee, Mr. Edward B. Whitney was, on due motion, chosen as Temporary Chairman.

2. On motion, duly seconded, the sum of $150 was appropriated to the Treasurer's Clerk for his services as such during the year 1907.

3. Messrs. Keck and Ingalsbe were duly appointed a Committee to audit the accounts of the Treasurer and to examine the books and vouchers appertaining thereto.

4. After such audit and examination said Committee reported that it found the accounts of said Treasurer to be correct, also the said books and vouchers appertaining thereto.