the gulf on the south with the two great oceans on either side, embracing mountains and valleys and plains and owning the sources and mouths of its mighty rivers, that no power, not even a civil war, could rend it asunder. To this day we may shudder to think what might have happened to our country if Louisiana had not become ours. Spain had just relinquished it to France. France under the stress of the Napoleonic wars yielded it to keep it from England; and we know that England's eye was upon it, for even as late as 1815 the English fleet which bore Packenham and his army to New Orleans, carried a full corps of officers to take possession of the country and govern it in the name and for the glory of the English It therefore seems fitting that this Association, in one year of a life which I trust will continue as long as the republic and as lawyers endure, should take note of this memorable achievement and participate in its celebration. But I must pass from this alluring theme to the duty of the hour.

crown.

acts.

Since the last meeting of this Association regular sessions of the legislatures have been held in Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Virginia -thirteen in all. In Oregon there has been a special session, and the people of Oregon, under the initiative and referendum. clause of their constitution, have passed certain legislative Montana has held an extraordinary session, and in Virginia the prolonged extra session of 1902-3-4, rendered necessary by the new constitution of that commonwealth, which went into effect July 10, 1902, has been concluded. The territorial legislature of Hawaii has had a special session. Porto Rico has held the second session of its Second Legislative Assembly, and also an extraordinary session. The Philippine Commission, a composite body originally created by the President of the United States as Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, and subsequently confirmed by Congress, exercising full legislative powers, has enacted many laws

governing the people of the Philippine Islands. The second session of the Fifty-eighth Congress of the United States, commencing on December 7th of last year and terminating on April 30th of this year, an unusually short period for the long session, has been held and passed into history.

Of the states which have held legislative sessions, three only-Iowa, Louisiana and Montana-lie within the domain of the Louisiana purchase. The only other state west of the Mississippi River where a session was held is Oregon, which, was acquired by original discovery and occupation and confirmed by treaties with England and Spain. Within the country of the Northwestern Territory owned by the United States at the adoption of the Constitution, Ohio alone has had a legislative session. Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Virginia represent the original states at the adoption of the Constitution, for Kentucky was carved out of Virginia and Mississippi in part out of Georgia and in part from a portion of the Floridas ceded by Spain.

The geographical area of all the American states is approximately 2,719,500 square miles, with a population of 74,698,440, while that of the states which have held legislative sessions is approximately 686,380 square miles, with a population of 31,111,672, only about 25 per cent. of the area and 42 per cent. of the population. Your President's address this year, so far as the states are concerned, is confined to a limited area with a limited population compared with that enjoyed by his predecessors in the odd years, and you are subjected to the painful disadvantage of not now enjoying a broad and comprehensive view of state legislative work. When you have heard only in part what has been done by those legislatures which have been in action since your last adjournment, I will leave to your imagination to supply what would have been done if the whole range of legislative batteries of the different states had been set in martial array. Annual sessions are now held in only six states-Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New

York, Rhode Island and South Carolina-a quadrennial session in one, Alabama, and biennial sessions in the others. There has been for many years a growing tendency towards the abolition of annual sessions, and South Carolina has within the year submitted a constitutional amendment abolishing them and providing for biennial sessions. When biennial sessions are adopted by all the states, in order to afford the Presidents of this Association equal fields and each meeting of the Association equal delight, there should be a redistribution, so that one-half may be held in alternate years. Against quadrennial sessions, in the name of this Association. and on behalf of its future Presidents, I here enter my protest, for if they should be universally adopted, for three years out of four the President's address, like Othello's occupation, would be gone, unless, indeed, our dominions should continue to spread and Congress and war legislative commissions and outlying territorial legislatures increase their activities. In the fourth year a special session of our Association would have to be held to hear the grand review, for it cannot be conceived that in a body like ours, entrenched in precedent, the President's address could be omitted or its subject changed. Let me add, to reconcile you to the disappointment at the paucity of legislative material at hand, that this is a presidential year and an examination of the records will show that for some reason, which if I knew I would not attempt to explain, during the years in which presidential elections are held our legislative bodies, state and national, are in a condition of partially suspended animation and do not do their level best.

OREGON.

The occasion of the special session in Oregon, lasting only three days, seems to have been a necessity to amend the revenue laws of the state to provide a more efficient method for the assessment and collection of taxes; to aid the navigation of the Columbia River, and its improvement by means of canals

and work on the channel of the river, and to memorialize Congress for an appropriation to aid the celebration of the centennial of the exploration of the Oregon country by Lewis and Clark.

There seems to be nothing noteworthy about the act which was passed amendatory of the revenue law.

The act relating to the Columbia River created a Board of Commissioners of Canals and Locks and authorized it in behalf of the state to acquire rights of way for the United States to carry out its contemplated improvements and to secure their release from all claims for damages done by the work and appropriated a considerable sum to that end.

The Revenue Act and the Columbia River Act, in order to become effective immediately, despite the initiative and referendum clause of the Oregon constitution, each contained an emergency provision to this effect: "It is hereby adjudged and declared that existing conditions are such that this act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health and safety and excepted from the operation and power of the referendum, and an emergency is hereby declared to exist, and this act shall take effect immediately." Had it not been for this emergency provision, these acts under the constitutional clause referred to could not have taken effect for some time after their passage, and in the meantime might have been subjected to the veto of the referendum.

The memorial in behalf of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition is a strong appeal for an appropriation by the United States in aid of that patriotic enterprise. It breathes the spirit of territorial expansion, eulogizes Jefferson and states that while he was minister to France and twenty years before any thought was given to the idea of acquiring territory west of the Mississippi River, except the island of Orleans at the mouth of the river he had planned to locate an American settlement on the northwest coast of North America, referring, evidently, to his attempt in 1786 to secure for a citizen of Connecticut permission to pass through Russia and

over Behring Straits to the North American coast, and thence overland to the United States.

Coast, the memorial says:

Speaking of the Pacific

"The Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon specially sets forth to the Congress of the United States that the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition will be representative in every respect of the tremendous progress and development of the great West in the century just passed, and, as an undertaking of so far reaching a character, merits the full measure of co-operation and support from the national government. The Pacific Coast, notwithstanding the large and important part it has played in the upbuilding of the nation and in rounding it out to its fullness as a world power, never has been favored with a government appropriation for an exposition. Over its shores the American flag waved in its first journey around the world from Boston and return, by way of the Columbia River and China. The humble fort that Lewis and Clark built at Clatsop in the winter of 1805 gave the United States its first foothold upon the Pacific Ocean-that theater of the world's new activities-and paved the way for the expansion that has increased the national domain from 827,000 square miles in 1783 to 3,727,000 square miles in 1903. The philosophy that taught President Jefferson that the mountain chain feeding so considerable a river as the Missouri on the east must be the source of another large stream flowing westward opened the path of civilization to the Pacific and provided, through our own country, the route to India, which was for centuries the dream and hope of every navigator from Columbus down to recent times. At the Columbia River, San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, Honolulu and Manila the United States is fortified to occupy, in war or in peace, the high station in the council of nations to which events in the Pacific have called it. Having faithfully discharged to the nation every obligation imposed upon it as an integral part of the union, or falling to it by reason of its environments, having in time of war responded to every call made upon it for the national defense, and having in time of peace poured forth its wealth of mines, farm and range for the general welfare, the Pacific Coast now asks from Congress, in the matter of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, the consideration which its past service to the nation and the merit of its cause deserve."