The resolution was read as follows:

"Resolved, That Francis Rawle, of Pennsylvania; Henry St. George Tucker, of Virginia; Alton B. Parker, of New York; Jacob M. Dickinson, of Tennessee; Frederick W. Lehmann, of Missouri, and Charles F. Libby, of Maine, former Presidents of the American Bar Association, be and they are hereby appointed a committee to formulate and submit to the Association for appropriate action at the morning session on Thursday, August 31, 1911, a suitable minute or resolution upon the proposition to make applicable to judges the doctrine of recall."

Francis Rawle, of Pennsylvania:

Our report is as follows:

"To the American Bar Association:

"Your committee, having given consideration to the subject submitted to it by the resolution of August 29, recommend the adoption of the following:

Resolved, That the application to judges of the principle of recall would create a judiciary whose decisions would not rest upon the law of the land, but would be influenced by transient. public sentiment, and that the establishment of such a judiciary would be destructive of our system of government.

"We believe that the aim of the advocates of this change is directly the reverse of that of the fathers of the republic who sought to establish a government of laws and not of men, and that it would deprive the individual citizen of the protection now afforded to him by the enforcement of those great principles of liberty won by the people of England after a struggle of 500 years principles which have been so faithfully enforced by the American judiciary from the foundation of our government as to justify the people of America in regarding the judiciary as the bulwark of their liberty.

"Resolved, That we most earnestly urge the members of the Bar in every state, through existing organizations or others to be formed, to cause to be presented to the people the reasons well understood by the legal profession why the recall should not be made applicable to judges;

And be it further Resolved, That a committee representing each state and territory be appointed by the President, of which committee the President shall be the honorary Chairman, whose duty it shall be to take such steps as it may deem best to expose the fallacy of judicial recall.”

This is signed by all the members of the committee.

Charles M. Woodruff, of Michigan:

I rise to move the adoption of that minute, and I want to utter a few thoughts for the members of this Association to consider. In the last analysis public sentiment becomes the law of the land. Public sentiment works for weal or for woe, depending upon whether or not it is based upon sound principles, logic and reason. A year ago at our meeting in Chattanooga we had a most eloquent and masterful defense of the constitutional principles upon which this government was founded, but so far as the public is concerned that splendid defense lies buried within the covers of our proceedings. This year we have had a brilliant plea for an independent judiciary as the essential of a constitutional and orderly government. Shall it also be allowed to repose unread and unheard of in the same graveyard? Now this minute and the committee's recommendation are a long step in the right direction.

We too often think of Alexander Hamilton as a lawyer. While Hamilton, Jefferson and others of the fathers were indeed. sound and able lawyers, it was as publicists and statesmen that they secured the foundation of this republic, upon the firm and enduring truths of constitutional liberty. If the members of the American Bar Association, individually or collectively, are going to save the country from the dangers which now threaten it, they must do so, not as modest lawyers, but as energetic publicists.

The President.

I ask for a suspension of the proceedings and that the audience rise to receive the President of the United States.

President Taft was escorted to the platform and took his seat. President Farrar:

There is a member of this Association who is bigger than its President in all dimensions, and I, therefore, resign my place in behalf of William Howard Taft, President of the United States.

The President of the United States:

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the American Bar Association: I have been trying to have a three weeks' vacation, but I find that the only vacation a President can have is a change from one kind of work to another. I had resolved to deny myself the pleasure of meeting you, but when my good friend Dickinson came all the way out to Beverly to ask me to come in, and told me what a gathering of lawyers there was here, I could not resist the temptation to come and be one of you for a while. I can say to lawyers what they won't misunderstand-other people may. It is a great pleasure for a lawyer and a judge to breathe the atmosphere that other lawyers and other judges breathe. There are a lot of things between us which go without saying. We start with our reasoning pretty far along because we have reasoned together up to conclusions upon which we all agree. Now all of us know that there is room for improvement in the law and in that part of the law with which we are concerned the procedure of law by which justice is to be administered. We all know that, because we have found it to be the case, and, as we know it better than most people, upon us falls the burden of initiating reforms in that regard.

It has been an intense pleasure to me to use what some reformers in other directions have told me was a pulpit, and the best pulpit in the country, to wit, the Presidency, to urge law reform and to invite the attention of the Supreme Court to the very great power entrusted to it by Congress in the statute of doing what they choose in the matter of reforming at least half of the procedure in the federal courts, i. e., the equity rules; and I am delighted to know that the Chief Justice and his associates have taken this work in hand and have invited the assistance of committees of the Bar from the nine circuits and that they are to meet in Washington and bring the result of their deliberations to the assistance of the court. When that is done and a simple form of procedure is hammered out with the assistance of the experience of the English courts, where Mr. Justice Lurton now is studying their procedure, I am sure a great

step in the direction of practical reform will have been accomplished. There are reforms for objects that never will be seen on land or sea until the millennium. Then there are reforms that are in the direction of practical progress, and that is what law reform is.

The temptation, in running over the list of papers which have been read before you, is, for a man occupying a position of judicial irresponsibility to express his opinion on each of the subjects which has attracted his attention and consideration. I see you have had some discussion as to the federal judicial salaries. Of course, as I once was a federal judge, I am in favor of increasing those salaries whenever opportunity arises. The judicial position is so high that there is something due to its dignity in the amount of compensation to be attached to it. Then there is something also and that is a real practical consideration-in having salaries high enough to attract the best men of the Bar, no matter what they are earning. But there are practical considerations in the securing of this advance of salary that we all must recognize and especially those who have had any experience in legislation in Washington. There are a great many district judges and there are a great many more district judges than there are circuit judges, and I have discovered that the movement toward the increase in the district judges' salary was a little stronger than that in the movement toward the increase in the circuit judges' salary. I think now that the Circuit Court judges are not paid as much as they ought to be in comparison with what the district judges receive. An ideal system is difficult. The cost of living is very different the country over. One who lives in a large metropolis has to pay more for his living than one living in a small town. And whether we ought to return to the old system by which different salaries were paid in different states is a question of much doubt. For myself, I think it would be better if we could fix the salaries in the American Bar Association, but as we cannot do that I am inclined to think that the return to the old system might be full of danger. Of course the salaries of the Supreme Court judges ought to be increased. We have

gotten them up now to fifteen thousand dollars, or something like that. We ought to get them up to twenty-five thousand dollars. A court which exercises such great responsibility and calls for such ability and learning, ought to have its members amply paid, so that they need not be dependent on lecturing in law schools and doing other things for the purpose of eking out a salary that only enables them to live.

I observed that you have discussed the subject of Patent Appeals. We have created courts in Washington recently two federal courts-and there is some danger that one of them at least may not have enough to do. One is the Court of Commerce, and the other is the Court of Customs Appeals. It is essential, I believe, in the proper administration of the customs laws that we should have a court of final jurisdiction that is expert, or contains experts by reason of practice in respect to the tariff. I do not like to say what John Sherman said-that the Supreme Court could not be trusted in a revenue tarff case, but I do mean to say that we are much more certain, under the present system, of securing a uniform administration of the revenue laws and the customs laws by a court constituted as is the present Court of Customs Appeals. But I doubt whether the Court of Customs Appeals is the court to which the question of patent appeals should be submitted. The Court of Commerce, however, is a court that might very well be used for that purpose. It is not a court of patent experts. I regret to differ with some of my associates at the Bar who are patent lawyers in thinking that that would be the best kind of a court. I think it is a great deal better to take a first-class lawyer and a first-class judge and make him a good patent expert than it is to take a patent expert and try to make him a first-class lawyer and a good judge; I do not, however, mean to detract from that atmosphere of mystery, or question that assumption of peculiar knowledge and experience with which some patent practitioners are anxious to impress the public mind. I think you will find that it is the judgment of the patent lawyers themselves who will speak frankly, that there are a great many fine patent law judges on the Bench who never had a patent case until they came to the Bench, and I