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needs an agent to buy material from the manufacturer, neither will the lawyer, whose business heretofore has been to advocate the rights of those who were too ignorant to know their own, be any longer necessary in the age where men know their rights and are able to advocate them in their own manner and to the full necessity of the occasion.

There is no longer an age of eloquence. Eloquence may be an entertainment, but it is not a necessity, seldom a compensation, and in the present age regarded as an evidence, in its indulgence, of the want of material sense and solid judgment. In this process of the elimination of all middlemen the next generation - certainly the next century-will behold the following course as one of the processes of the evolution of civilization: The profession of the law, as a calling and form of occupation for compensation, gone. In its place the whole system of our method of obtaining justice revolutionized. In different localities men who are presumed to know the law will be selected by popular ballot as arbiters. Disputants upon any question or right will present from their own mouths-accompanied with such record as they may possess their respective claims, and before this particular officer, chosen by the people, this arbiter will announce what the law is, what the respective rights of the contestants are, and give judgment accordingly.

From this either person will be allowed to take his appeal, and he will be permittel to go before three men or more representing the final tribunal, and these disputants will have their say over again, and this final board will state what the law is and what is just to the contestants, and there the matter will end. This was the theory of the early Persian government, and the construction of caliph and cali and in Rome, as intended, under the prætor. It will be realized in its highest accomplishment when the law, as a profession for money, is abolished and the lawyer becomes a cr a'or in the society and civilization of man instead of a mere absorbing drone, existing, as he necessarily must, upon the honey produced by the bees of industry.

Finally, I say that with the future as I see it I advise no

man to enter the law who does not go to it stimulated as a first principle with a desire to use the law as a method to aid the citizen and elevate the state. I discourage any man who seeks to enter it as means of financial reward.-Tacoma Sunday

(Address Delivered Before the Maryland State Bar Association.)

To the members of our great profession whose lives are spent in applying, interpreting and in large part making the law, it cannot be necessary to preach respect for that which justifies our professional existence. We cannot respect ourselves unless we hold the law in high honour. We like to roll from our tongues the sonorous sentences of Hooker: "Her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world, all things in Heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power," but must we not in all good conscience ask ourselves whether these words are trae in our country to-day, and if they are not, whether a peculiar duty does no: rest upon us, the ministers and guardians of the law?

"All that

It is hardly too much to say that civilization is the process of restraining the will of the individual by law, that the liberty of a people depends on its success in curbing by a written or unwrit'en constitution the power of its rulers, and that the cause of justice in the world is advanced by observing the law of nations. makes existence valuable to anyone," says Mill, "depends on the enforcement of restraints on the actions of other people." The history of civilization is the record of the struggle between might Lord Russell in his great address

and right, between force and law.

at Saratoga

ranked “The narrowing of the domain of mere force as

a governing factor in the world, the love of ordered freedom" high

among the "true signs" of civilization, while lawlessness is everywhere the badge of barbarism.

are co'nmon.

No one will dispute these abstract propositions, yet if we inquire whether these signs of civilization are conspicuous in the United States, the answer is not pleasant. Respect for the law seems to be stea lily decaying, an by this I do not mean only that lawless acts Sporadic crimes will occur always and in every community. It is only when the community itself tolerates and defends them that they become evidence of its spirit. Let me call your attention briefly to instinces of what I mean, and if in doing so I touch upon controversial questions, pray bear in mind that I do not propose to discuss these questions but only to use what has been done by way of illustration.

From the end of the reconstruction period until within a few years all coloured men in the Southern States were legally entitled to vote. Whether you approve the law or not, that was the law. Ye for twenty years at least this right was in practice taken from them. Intimidation, violence and fraud in various forms, tissue paper ballots and false counts nullified the law: The facts were not disputed, indeed these practices were openly admitted and justified. The whole country knew that in some ten states the law was set aside, and though the result was to create the political force known as "the Solid South" and in some cases to change the complexion of Congress, to control the Presidency and to alter the whole policy of the government, the country acquiesced. The lesson has thus been taught to a whole generation that the political rights of a citizen may be violated, and the law which secures them to him set aside with impunity, if only he belongs to the coloured race.

Is it surprising that the next step is taken easily? The laws which protect the person and the property of a citizen are no more sacred than those which secure his right to vote. Why respect the first if the last may be disregarded? Why waste time and money in trying a negro accused of crime when lynch law inflicts so much more speedy punishment? Nay, Why infiict merely the penalties which the law recognizes if burning and torture are more likely to prevent crime by inspiring criminals with fear? It is true that the law forbids cruel and unusual punishment, but the law does not protect coloured men. Originally excused as necessary to prevent a certain crime, lynch

law is prompt to extend its jurisdiction. Out of one hundred and twenty-seven persons lynched in this country in one year, only twenty-four were even charged with that crime, and this was five years ago. During one week in 1893, in three states, thirteen men were lynchel, of whom not one was so charged. In the last and most inhuman case one of the persons who was tortured and burned to death was charged only with homicide in hot blood, while the other was his innocent wife whose only offence was that she shared her husband's flight.

feeling

A bad practice soon becomes epidemic. The original excuse is forgotten. "The villainy you teach me, I will execute and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction." In these words Shylock expressed a very common feeling among the uneducated laity. What is the next step? Why should a white rascal be tried at great expense when the only object is to punish him and that can be done so much more quickly? It is the crime, not the colour, that is important. This argument results in lynching white men charged with murder, horse stealing, and other offences.

principle are easily made. A
colour. He is as God made

by his own choice.
by his own choice. If it is right

Further applications of the negro is not responsible for his him, but a "scab" becomes s by intimidation and violence to prevent coloured men from voting, is it not just as right to keep strike-breakers from working, and so taking away the bread of honest labourers? In 1892 Carnegie & Company sent some watchmen to Luard their works during a strike, and in doing so they did what they had an absolute right to do. Neither they nor the men they sent were violating any law or interfering with anyone's rights. Yet the unhappy watchmen were attacked with cannon, with rifles, with dynamite ; attempts were made to destroy the barges in which they were shelterel with burning oil, and when to save their lives they surrendered, they were beaten, robbed and some were even killed by the strikers. The casualties of a single day were ten men killed and over thirty wounded. The encounter was simply private war on a considerable scale, and it is merely one instance of the lawless

violence upon which striking workmen too often depend for success in their struggles with their employers. Scarcely a considera ble strike occurs which has not such concomitants. In attempting to free themselves from what they consider the tyranny of their employers, these men invade the freedom of others, and deny the unquestioned right of every free American to work for whom and when he will. They strike at the very foundation of our government. It is not the occasional riot when men's passions are deeply stirred which is significant. It is the fact that these acts of violence are justified in cool blood by large bodies of Americans-that the ordinary law of the land, the law which protects us all from assault, robbery and murder, is no longer respected by these countrymen of ours, that is really important. Sam Parks, a conviet, fresh from Sing Sing, led the labour procession in New York.

The suppression of the coloured vote in violation of law has been justified on the ground that it was necessary to preserve civilization. Lynching has been defended as required to protect the sanctity of wives and mothers. The strikers insist that they have the right to beat and kill the "strike breaker," in order to preserve their freedom and to secure a likelihood for their families and themselves, and that unless they can prevent the introduction of new men in their places the strike must fail, and the labourer become the virtual slave of the capitalist. The striker and the lyncher may each detect the fallacy in the other's argument, but each derives moral support from the other's example. Each for reasons which seem to him adequate, breaks the law, but can any tribunal state a rule which will justify one and not the other, or hold that either the law breaker is right without establishing a principle which will excuse the others?

I have thus far spoken of law breaking by violence defended by the strongest arguments that can appeal to men, the preservation. of society, the sanctity of woman, the calls of dependent wife and children. There are other kinds which are as common and more

insidious.

Said the superintendent of buildings in New York :