Those examples of the invasion of property rights by states are only a few from an amazingly large number. They are all very late cases because my idea is to demonstrate the absolute need at the present hour of what Jefferson called "the chains of the Constitution."

One is bewildered by the mere thought of where we would be now had not the courts from year to year effectuated constitutional limitations and kept both national and state governments where they belong.

Did so many of the supreme courts of states uphold so many illegal actions because of lack of constitutional knowledge or because they were inclined (unconsciously, of course) to favor local opinion or evade responsibility? The question occurs whether state judges should have a more stable tenure of office. This was a question when the Declaration of Independence was written. Unstable tenure of the judicial office was specified in the Declaration as a wrong done to the Colonies by the British Government. Hence the provisions in the national Constitution for appointment instead of election, for term during good behavior, and for salary which cannot be reduced by the Congress or the President.

AGAINST LIBERTY.

Passing from the aggressions of the states upon interstate commerce, upon the national courts, and upon property, we now consider some very recent aggressions upon the liberty of the man.

The Supreme Court of the United States was obliged to hold (239 U. S. 33) violative of the Equal Protection clause of the national Constitution a provision inserted by initiative in the constitution of Arizona compelling employers to have at least 80 per cent of employees native born. Our Constitution covers all living under the flag.

In 1923 the Supreme Court held (262 U. S. 390) that the law of Nebraska forbidding the teaching before graduation from the eighth grade of any but the English language was violative of the liberty of the citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment to teach and that of the parent to rear and educate his children, the Constitution of our country extending to others, the court said, than those "born with English on the tongue." Justices

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Holmes and Sutherland dissented because there was presented a question on which men might reasonably differ." Since a difference of opinion is an essential to every lawsuit, that theory would prevent the Supreme Court from ever holding invalid any attempt at exertion of the police power. The Supreme Court of Nebraska had upheld the law, Justice Cornish dissenting.

In the same volume the Supreme Court held unconstitutional a similar law enacted by Iowa in 1919. It had been upheld by the Supreme Court of the state, Chief Justice Evans and Justices Weaver and Preston dissenting.

And in the same volume a similar law enacted by Ohio in 1919 was held to be in violation of the liberty of the parent and the child. The Supreme Court of Ohio had sustained it without dissent.

The right of the parent to rear and instruct the child preceded government. It is one of the unalienable rights mentioned in our Declaration of Independence as coming from the Creator. This liberty is above and beyond the touch of government, and particularly so in a nation which was established to compel the government to let the man alone. Each of the colonies was founded by immigrants whose government in Europe would not let them alone. Therefore, the chiefest feature of our Constitution is that the man must have immunity from needless interference by his government, of which he himself is the creator.

The climax of this kind of governmental interference with the liberty of the man who, in the United States, is the source of power, and who sets up government to be his servant and not his dictator, came from the amendment to the Constitution of Oregon in November, 1922. The amendment was adopted by the unrepresentative and therefore un-Republican and consequently un-American method known as the referendum. It would require all children over 8 years of age and under 16 to attend the public schools. It was held by both the United States District Court of Oregon and the Supreme Court of the United States (268 U. S. 510) that the amendment and the law making it effective would deny to the citizen that liberty which the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the state to touch. While the state may very properly require that the child do not grow up in ignorance and thereby become a peril to society, and while it may compel edu

cation if the parent neglect to provide it, there its power ends. Oregon had asserted the immemorial European doctrine which was repudiated for this continent by the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War, that the state is superior to and master of the man. On the contrary, in the United States from him proceeds all governmental power, and he sets up government to be, not his master, but his servant.

This review of the recent encroachments of the national government upon the states, and upon property and liberty, of the Congress upon both the Executive Department and the Judicial, and of the aggressions of the states in the national field and upon personal liberty and property rights, is intended to illustrate from living and breathing law that the Constitution is not of a past age but for all time. It deals with principles of government as unchangeable as are the principles of morals covered by the Ten Commandments. They cannot be disregarded with safety. A second purpose is to show from actual transactions how perilous to our form of government is the general lack of education which we have permitted. The Congress and the state legislature have taken steps which boys and girls in the upper grade schools and the high schools should know that the Constitution forbids, that is to say, which the philosophy of history condemns. It should be impossible to find among all the people the lack of information which is exhibited in legislative halls and other governmental places.

For a third of a century before the Civil War constitutional questions were subjects of discussion in the press, on the platform, and in every home. During the reconstruction era following that war and long after new constitutional questions were thus discussed. In that way constitutional education of a sort was quite well kept up. A substitute for former educational forces must now be employed.

To look after education in the Constitution is peculiarly the lawyer's duty. He wrote the Constitution and has since defended it. To compel the study of it in the schools is his present task. On this our future depends. If knowledge is power anywhere, it should be so under a government in which each man and woman has a voice. Conversely, a lack of knowledge is a want of power. As Nehemiah restored Jerusalem by requiring every one to

build a section of the wall, generally in front of his own home, so each local organization of lawyers, even to the smallest, should attend to constitutional education. The Constitution should go into the schools even though that may require the casting out of some studies already there. Then when a constitutional question arises every man and woman will recognize it, and know how to weigh and consider it. Each should be able to contend for principle, as Vice-President Marshall urged, and to say what Edmund Burke did to justify his course in Parliament in support of the American colonies:

I put my foot in the tracks of our forefathers, where I can neither wander nor stumble.

RECENT CHANGES IN THE ENGLISH LAW OF

PROPERTY.

BY

DUNCAN CAMPBELL LEE, M. A., LL. B.,

OF THE NEW YORK BAR, AND OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, LONDON,
BARRISTER-AT-LAW.

The generosity of your welcome, and the fact that my dear friend, Mr. Saner, is my sponsor to this great audience, are ample reward for coming five thousand miles to deliver this address. When I realize that I am the guest of my own countrymen, am only an ordinary member of this Association, and hold no office of profit or trust under my own or any other government, my heart is warmed at the invitation I have received and at the welcome you have just now so generously granted me.

We are accustomed to hear that a certain chivalric admiration and respect for woman is a distinguishing characteristic of the American people. If that be so, I am sure the next leading characteristic is that of kindness. An English friend of mine has recently travelled by motor car from Seattle to New York and incidentally come in touch with thousands of our people. I have heard him tell his friends more than once, with evident satisfaction, that he did not experience during the whole of that long trip a single discourtesy, but only kindness after kindness. As guests of the Colorado Bar Association at this memorable meeting, we all are ready to say the same thing. The brilliant and versatile President of the Colorado Bar has told us in song of a wonderful kindness that was met with on "The Old Santa Fé Trail"; but I personally wish to say: The Denver Trail is good enough for me!

I am not here in any official capacity and I have no right to speak for the Bar of England or any part thereof, but I do bear greetings from the Lord Chancellor, whom I met just before leaving London. He asked me to convey to the officers and members of The American Bar Association his best wishes for a successful meeting, and to say that he recalled his own visit