smaller banks were not sufficiently protected and that there was not enough time for the members to fully digest its provisions.

These are but a few of the large number of important bills that failed of passage, many of them because it was impossible in the short session to bring them to a final vote. Nevertheless, it is evident that the Legislature of 1914 enacted a respectable body of progressive legislation. A cumbrous machinery and a session too short for the digestion of the mass of matters with which it was called upon to deal, are responsible for the fact that more was not accomplished for the promotion of justice and for. the modernizing of our legal methods. All of the regular sessions since the new Constitution was proclaimed, have labored under a like handicap, and the wonder is that the Legislature has done so well under such difficulties. It has been composed for the most part of patriotic men of good ability anxious to do good and avoid evil, but unable, at times, in the whirl of events to know whether they were doing either. We have seen a ten-year era of legislation by objection and obstruction, and there have been signs of more than one conspiracy of inaction, but the time is coming when the Legislature will be reasonably responsive to the public will and to the best thought of the progressive citizenry of Virginia, and then we shall be able to determine whether the present form of our legislative machinery is adequate to the needs of a forward-moving people.

NOTE: The Editor has not been able to secure memorials for all of these, although publication of the report has been delayed several months in the effort to do so, but he earnestly hopes that memorials not now ready will be published in the next report.

ALLEN CAPERTON BRAXTON.

"Great things are done by devotion to one idea." No better illustration of this truth could be found than the life of the eminent lawyer and citizen whose death we mourn, and whose memory we wish to enshrine.

Allen Caperton Braxton was born February 6, 1862, at Union, Monroe county, in what is now West Virginia, and where his family were temporarily sojourning. His early life, however, was spent at "Chericoke," in King William county, in this State. He was the son of Dr. Tomlin Braxton and Mary Caperton Braxton. His mother was the daughter of Allen T. Caperton, United States Senator from West Virginia, and whose namesake the subject of this sketch was.

Young Braxton grew up in the healthy, vigorous atmosphere of a refined yet simple country home, and in the pursuits of a Virginia country boy acquired that strength of body and clarity of mind which gave promise of a long life, and which, as it was, enabled him to stand with fortitude and bear with indomitable courage the burdens and discouragements which soon shadowed, though they never darkened, the years of his early manhood.

His education was obtained at Pampatike Academy, in the same county, one of the best classical schools of that day. One of his teachers was his friend and subsequent associate in much important litigation, John Pickrell, Esq.

He was compelled to abandon his studies at the age of sixteen, as the death of his father threw the care and support of the family upon young Braxton as the eldest born. He met this responsibility with the same calm and unflinching courage with which he met every demand of life. Indeed, it served him the good purpose of steadying a very intense nature, and gave direction to qualities which needed just such a field to bring forth their best fruit. For the sake of his people there was no task to which young Braxton ever hesitated to turn. It is needless to say that however humble the task he touched nothing that he did not adorn and dignify. He taught school, was a bookkeeper and

civil engineer. He read law and took a private course of instruction in the office of a legal friend. With the exception of a summer course of lectures, under the late John B. Minor, it was in this hard school that young Braxton acquired his sound training in the fundamental principles of the law. But his difficulties and discouragement were not yet at an end. From the lack of means he could not endure the long-waiting-for practice which is the usual experience of the young lawyer. He continued to work on a railroad, at one time accepting employment as a brakeman, until, with the help of friends, he was able to settle down to the practice of his profession in 1883.

From that time his success was assured, and he rapidly rose to the front rank of the Staunton Bar, then adorned by some of the great legal luminaries of this State. He was successively Commonwealth's attorney and city attorney of Staunton.

But we cannot turn from these days of his poverty and hardship to those of his great professional success without directing attention, especially of young men, not only of his chosen profession, but of the whole State, to the lesson which it teaches of perseverance and strenuous effort, undaunted by difficulties and undismayed by the vicissitudes of fortune, which would have broken the spirit and quenched the ambition of a less manly character.

But when the reward came it came abundantly. A solid, but then local, reputation as a student and thinker on the problems of public law aided in his election as a member from Augusta county of the Constitutional Convention of 1901-2. He was made chairman of the Committee on Corporations, and was also a member of the Committees on Judiciary and Final Revision. He at once established a reputation as an able debater and well-informed publicist. His speech on the question of the members taking the oath was characterized by the logic, marshaling of facts and wide range of argument, that always distinguished his discussions of constitutional and legal topics. With the exception of some contributions to the chapter regarding cities and towns, he in general confined his labors in the convention to the three committees of which he was a member. But his fame rests chiefly upon the sections of the Constitution

regarding corporations and their proper control. He was the author of this chapter, and it supplies a monument more enduring and lasting than any material shaft. Whilst the division of our government into separate Federal and State departments has caused its wide scope to be emasculated and some of its provisions restricted, yet it stands to-day the leading reform which that convention accomplished. By putting the granting of charters and the creation of corporations in the hands of a commission it at once cleared the atmosphere of our legislative halls, and removed therefrom the malign influences which had previously surround that body. It put a wise check upon corporate excesses without hampering the proper investment of capital. It taught transportation companies and other public service corporations that they must not disregard their public duties in their desire for private gain.

The reputation thus gained in the hall of the convention bore abundant fruit in the extensive practice which immediately followed; and was further enhanced by his contributions to the law magazines, and especially his address before the Virginia State Bar Association on "The History of the Enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment.' The attacks upon the constitutional provisions relating to corporations and the acts passed in pursuance thereof, furnished a brilliant opportunity for a display of his knowledge of fundamental principles and his philosophic views of our government. But his practice was by no means confined to these cases. On the contrary, there was very little litigation of prime importance in which he was not engaged on one side or the other. In these cases he displayed the same qualities which gave him his reputation as a constructive statesman. As stated at the opening of this paper, it was his devotion to one idea, and that idea the cause of his client, that enabled Caperton Braxton to accomplish such great things. The intensity of his nature displayed itself in litigation like a soldier fighting the battles of his country. The same rapt and exclusive absorption which marks the poet or musician in moments of inspiration inspired Caperton Braxton throughout a case, however long the litigation or dull the work. Everything was sacrificed to the cause of his clients. Sleep, meals, exercise and every other