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ments, and judgments were obtained recovering 2,364,000 acres, valued at over $50,000,000.

Investigations of violations of the banking laws averaged 19 cases per month.

One hundred and seventy-eight cases were brought under the white slave law.

Under the solicitor of the treasury there were 1,505 civil suits brought and 3,520 criminal suits brought.

Under the solicitor of commerce there were 336 opinions rendered; 1,280 bonds examined.

Under the Department of Prisons there were 15,400 measurements of criminals, consisting of 12,500 finger prints, and 2,500 Bertillon. This Department contains a file of 52,400 finger prints, 36,098 Bertillon measurements, and 90,308 criminal records.

Under the supply division there were 5,800 requisitions; 2,078 purchases.

The Department during the past year collected and turned into the treasury $3,500,000 in cash, saved to the Government by recovery, or in suits defended $105,000,000; is defending claims against the Government amounting to $200,000,000, and commenced new suits involving approximately $400,000,000 in value.

Aside from the regular force in Washington, there are 86 district attorneys, 160 regular assistant district attorneys, and 86 other employees in the offices of district attorneys. The business of the Department, with its district attorneys, assistants, and marshals, extends to Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico.

However great the power of laws and the vigilance of public opinion, a tolerable order cannot prevail in society if men fail to keep a certain watch over themselves-if they fail to place on themselves certain inward restraints that will prevent them from taking advantage of every occasion that may arise to do evil with impunity. In respect to two duties this necessity is especially urgent: The duty to tell the truth in business, and the duty not to abuse one's strength upon the weak. In business life men have been lying not only with impunity but for their own

advantage, and if justice is to triumph, truth must be practiced spontaneously, if possible.

No system of laws can be imagined so minute and perfect that it will succeed in making impossible the infinite ways in which the strong may oppress the weak.

The discipline of work is no longer sufficient by itself to keep the modern State in good order. Man is not a living machine

solely, destined to produce wealth.

Our times not only fail to give man any moral support to overcome temptation and to perform his duty, but rather to incite him in many ways to yield to temptation and to do violence to duty.

Fraud particularly has become second nature to the modern

man.

Commerce and industry, which make up so large a part of modern life, become increasingly infested with fraud in which that man succeeds best and makes the most money who lies hardest to the public, and under the appearance of superior quality, pans off an inferior product.

In society where on the one hand all inner restraints against lying and fraud are destroyed and on the other so many inducements and rewards are offered to falsehood and fraud, it is not inevitable that fraud should become pervasive. What will become of public morality and life in that day when no man feels any remorse or scruple in committing fraud in business; when every man is both defrauder and defrauded—a defrauder in matters which he understands, and defrauded in those matters in which he is compelled to rely on others?

Another peril which threatens our society, tormented as it is by boundless desire, is the growing ease with which the powerful abuse their power. Owing to the diffusion of culture and liberty, by the weak uniting in their own defense, force will, to a certain extent, be met by force. This balance will be obtained more in matters of worldly goods than in matters of the soul, for in the unrestrained and boundless chase of the dollar and pleasure, of which our modern life is the theatre, the spirit of charity is being snuffed out and the souls of men are taking on a hardness and

brutality which may some day result in distressing and terrible surprises.

Man is a limited being, and, therefore, needs to set limits on his desire.

The future of liberty and, therefore, of justice, hinges, in a country such as ours, very largely upon the ideals, the comprehension, and the sympathy, of the members of our profession. They have been, and will continue to be, to a very large extent, so long as our Government remains in its present form, the moulders of its thought and the framers of its laws, and upon their appreciation of what is justice and the rights of mankind much depends. It would aid this cause of the establishment of justice greatly if each one of them would read with thoughtfulness and sympathy, at least once a year, the declaration of rights attached to the first Constitution of Virginia, and try to live and have others live up to its spirit.

We do not live for this day alone. We cannot justly live for ourselves alone. We must not sit idly by and wait for the iron to become hot to strike, but make it hot by striking, and not simply to prepare to rule the storm, but if necessary, to raise the storm and rule it. We need men, real men, to help change the present point of view, the mental attitude of society, and to erect and establish civilized standards of peace, intelligence, good will; to bring about that good day when we will celebrate the triumph of patience, sympathy, of truth and justice, with band music and display and acclaim, as we now glorify the spirit of war, social and national hostility, and the rage of the passions, we should

"Stand to our work and the wise,
Certain of voice and pen;

We are neither children nor Gods,
But men in a world of men."

Panama Canal Tolls

ANNUAL ADDRESS DELIVERED BY HON. CHARLES E.
LITTLEFIELD, of the New York Bar.

The recommendation of President Wilson, March 5, 1914, that the exemption from the payment of tolls at the Panama Canal

"upon vessels engaged in the coastwise trade of the United States"

with the assertion that the exemption was "in plain contravention of the Treaty" raised at once the question of the correct legal construction of the Treaty. While the discussion engendered has taken a very much wider range, this paper will be. confined to that issue. Inasmuch as this is to be a legal discussion upon legal principles, it will be convenient to state at the outset the salient, well-known legal rules of construction applicable, although the major part of the discussion has proceeded with an utter disregard of all rules.

While a treaty is an international contract, it is also a law. The Constitution so declares

"and all Treaties made

law of the land." (Con. Art. VI.)

The court treats it as a law:

shall be the supreme

"Neither can this court supply a casus omissus in a treaty any more than in a law." (U. S. v. Choctaw Nation, 179, U. S. 533; 45 L. ed. 306).

The rules, then, that apply to the construction of laws apply to the construction of a treaty, as it is a part of the "supreme

law." Great industry has been exercised in resurrecting long forgotten documents and historical conditions, having no connection with or relation to the Treaty in question, for the purpose of impressing upon its terms a desired meaning, which otherwise it does not seem to be possible to find therein. The famous speech of Senator Root (1913) is practically wholly devoted to these extraneous, aliunde considerations, and is an extremely able, exhaustive and astute effort to establish from the outside, what in his judgment should be found on the inside, of the HayPauncefote Treaty, quite irrespective of whether the language used by the contracting parties establishes his pro-British contention. In common with Sir Edward Grey, he treats a reference in the preamble of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty to section 8 of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty as equivalent to an incorporation of that section into the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty. As to this the rule of construction is well settled:

"Grotious has assigned three common places from whence we may trace out the design where the words are obscure or ambiguous, viz.: the subject, the effects and the circumstances." (Puffendorf Book V, Chap. XII (1749).

Attention should be paid to the reason of the Treaty

"whenever it is required to explain an obscure, equivocal and undetermined point, either of a law or of a treaty, or to make an application of them to a particular case.' Book 2, Ch. 17, Sect. 287, Ed. 1796).

(Vattel

"If there be ambiguity in the contract resort may be had to the situation of the parties, and the circumstances under which it was entered into for the purpose not of changing the writing, but of furnishing light by which to ascertain its actual significance." (Walker v. Brown, 165 U. S. 654-668; 41 L. ed. 872).

"The spirit of the act must be extracted from the words of the act and not from conjectures aliunde." (Gardiner v. Collins, 2 Pet. 58, 93; 7 L. ed. 347, 359).

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