SPECIAL ADDRESS. stood; because they are wanting in definition of rights, duties and obligations under changed conditions by which they may clearly understand themselves. This occurs when men grow restless under the restraints of customs, usages and regulations which operate as a check upon the larger life that society feels is upon it. But in time, after the matters about which men wrangle are discussed in the courts to the end tof calling out their carefully considered decisions, disputed rights become fixed, duties are declared, obligations are understood and the demands of an advanced state of society are incorporated into and become a part of the system of the law by which men choose to be governed. In the midst of frequently recurring periods of political excitement in which legislation is demanded or denounced, at a time when discontented and restless or designing persons are proclaiming their demands for additional legislation through the periodicals and daily press, the superficial observer might be led to conclude that social development depends wholly upon the action of the distinguished gentlemen who biennially meet at our state capitals and those who annually meet at Washington. Much as the faithful discharge of duty by these gentlemen may accomplish in the administrative affairs of government, it is interesting to note that in the development of society where the great system of the common law prevails, only a few statutes have served more than a temporary or local purpose. It is likewise interesting to note that in no place have social conditions been so rapidly advanced in the pursuit of the higher purposes of life, in no place has society developed so perfectly in aid of human energy, as in those places where an extensive and comprehensive system of unwritten law has been judiciously and wisely administered. Such a system possesses flexibility and yields with ease to the essential requirements of normal growth. Useful as statute law is in the administrative affairs of government, it serves only a minor purpose in the development of a state of society when compared with such a pur ROBERT W, HILSCHER. pose served by the unwritten law declared by the courts. I am inclined to emphasize this statement owing to oft recurring epidemic demands for legislation. For all social movements, and the economic movements to which they are related, follow natural laws; and they can not be made to yield obedience to legislative enactments out of harmony with such natural laws. They become known to men and become established in a system through the contentions that arise between men.. The system of laws that such contentions call upon the courts to declare after careful discussion and study of the principles to which men naturally give approval and yield obedience, will be more accommodating to the activities of life, will be more unconsciously obeyed, than any legislative system whose rigid enactments call for adjudication to limit, explain and define them before they can be readily adapted to the affairs and movements of life. In other words, it is better to have, as nearly as practicable, a system of laws that is the product of life as it is actually lived, than to have a system formed according to a legislature's notion of what life ought to be, and how it ought to be lived. The one is permanent and harmonious and of a flexibility that will meet and satisfy changing conditions; while the other, as shown by experience, can only be temporary and insufficient to meet such ends. It is better to trust the task of forming such a system to the infallible judgment of life in its labors of social evolution than to trust it to the fallible and wavering judgment of legislatures. There is a popular belief that the ingenuity of the lawyer, together with what is known as sharp practice, are more potent in the evasion of the law, in giving encouragement to those things which disturb society, than in enforcing the law and preventing such disturbances. This, in the nature of things, can not be true in wide experience and is, perhaps, only apparently true in isolated and infrequent instances. SPECIAL ADDRESS. The forum in which his powers are exercised is illuminated by the searching light of common sense. It is pervaded by an atmosphere by whose influence deliberation is invoked and caution enforced. I know there are those upon whom such surroundings have but little influence.. But we are considering the lawyer and not lawyers; we are considering the qualities and mission of those high minded gentlemen, and they are legion, whose life work is the study and mastery of those principles upon which the proper relations between men, in organized society, are sustained; who strive after that wisdom by whose guiding power the race has made its progress from darkness into light that it may be utilized in the affairs of men. We are not considering those few victims of baseness who have yielded the mastership to become the cringing servants of vice. In such a forum, where the powers of the lawyer are wielded, a wrong principle can achieve no more than a temporary triumph. For the battles involving the principle of social progress that are there waged are manifestations of the mighty struggle of life. In that struggle life is always serious. It is always honest. In such a forum its seriousness and honesty hold hypocrisy and error at a disadvantage and a wrong principle is compelled in time to yield its place to truth. It must be apparent that we are approaching, if indeed we have not already arrived at, a time when the lawyer in the true sense will be demanded. Thoughtful men have observed with much anxiety that some of the changes that have been going on have deeper significance than the mere accumulation, shifting and aggregation of property. It has been pointed out that an incalculable amount of the property of the country has had withdrawn from it important qualities which it formerly possessed; that the personal characteristics which formerly attached to all property by virtue of individual ownership and control have disappeared from such property as has passed into corporate ownership and con ROBERT W. HILSCHER. trol. The suspension of the personal responsibility of an individual owner of such property to his fellow members of society, the withdrawal from it of the personal qualities of an individual owner, have tended to endow it solely with the commercial and industrial quality. This is a radical change from the time honored order of things when each article of property, in its influence upon social conditions, was invested with the personal qualities and characteristics of an individual owner. It has aroused a deep seated and growing teeling that when the moral accountability of the owner of property to society is weakened or withdrawn from it, something is needed to direct and restrain its increased industrial and commercial power to its proper social uses; to the end that property rights shall be fully protected and the social purposes of such property fully met. This is not the place to discuss industrial combinations, the race question, or other questions of like absorbing interest upon which the best thought of the land is directed. What I desire is to note the fact that these questions are upon us. They are worthy of the intense energies and advanced enlightenment of the twentieth century. They are questions to the solution of which legislation should be cautiously applied till we know more than that there are such questions. Their true and deep significance must first be ascertained. They are questions that are already vexing the judicial tribunals of the land; to which the true lawyer is giving his thought. In their solution, in harmony with the advanced standard of life out of which they spring, the highest qualities of the lawyer will be required. SPECIAL ADDRESS. SPECIAL ADDRESS. ETHICS OF THE PROFESSION. EDWIN M. ASHCRAFT, of Chicago. In considering what the conduct of the lawyer should be, it is well to consider the responsible position he occupies. The dominant factor in Congress, in the law making power of every state and nation, the adviser of the president, the governor, and every administrative officer, the trusted counsellor of municipalities, private corporations and individuals, he occupies a responsible position in the marts of trade and commerce, he handles vast estates and sums of money and securities without bond or other indemnity, except his honor. It is estimated that on an average, all the property in the state passes through the hands of the lawyers as often as once in twenty-five years. From this profession, men are universally chosen to administer the laws. They are selected, whether for the administration of the law, as advocates, or as counsel, on account of their professed knowledge and experience in the rules governing the rights of people and things. There may have been a time when lawyers were retained by the business world with a hope, on account of their legal learning and skill, to obtain thereby some undue advantage in the transaction of business, but it is a pleasure to observe that in modern times the employment is largely on account of their knowledge of the rights of the property and the individual, and their ability to make equitable and legal con |