ble to explain, even to an intelligent client, that his right is in equity, and not at law. We know that the uninitiated fondly believe that equity.is ideal justice, but those of us who have pored over the pages of Spence and Story and Pomeroy, have long since learned that it is not the chancellor's sense of what is just and equal, but a complex system of established law, which has gradually shaped itself into a refined science which no human faculties can master without intense application. Now it is not proposed in this report to change one scintilla of the great principles of either the common law or equity, but only to simplify their application to the rights which courts and judges are instituted to preserve and protect. It is no novel attempt to impair the usefulness of the two systems, but an honest effort to show the lawyers of Virginia that in this way, by the fusion of the modes of procedure into one form of action, justice can be more speedily administered. It does not interfere with a single vested right.

There was a time when the several common law actions were amply sufficient to meet all the requirements of society; but it was before the light of civilization had broadened human vision. There is not a man within the sound of my voice who would return to that distant day if he now had the power to do so. The broadening horizon is always in the future; the narrowing and darkening one in the past. The conservatism of our Virginia people is something of which we may justly feel proud, but it can continue to command our own admiration and that of others only while it adheres to those portions of the systems which are founded upon reason and common sense. The committee are of opinion that there is no reason why justice in Virginia should be administered in more than one form of action, and so report to this Association. It is not a committee composed exclusively of members of the Bar who favored the new procedure, but when appointed it was supposed to be as evenly divided as a committee of five could be. Four out of the five sign the report recommending the consolidation of law and equity procedure. The other member has made no counter report, and no systematic effort has been made to present the reasons for allowing the procedure to remain as it is. Many members of the Bar honestly believe in the change, but do not wish it now because they think they will

be put to some trouble to learn it. Your chairman has often been approached with suggestions of this kind.

The law is the greatest of all professions. It has to do with the affairs great and small of life. Those of us who have mas. tered some of the details of our profession, have weighty and onerous problems to contend with and think it is a pity that justice should be hedged about with a clumsy procedure which has long since outgrown its usefulness. Delay in the administration of both criminal and civil law is a terrible evil, and it is the duty of every man who loves his profession to do all in his power to strike it down.

There are many cases in which the reports of commissioners in chancery, accompanied with depositions, are submitted to the court, after fearful delays, in bad handwriting, in such a way that it is impossible for the judge to pass upon the reports and exceptions in an intelligent manner, and according to the very right of the cases. A referee would save much time and trouble in such cases, and the courts should have the power to appoint them. The only possible difficulty about the new system is the jurytrial, and this difficulty has speedily disappeared in every jurisdiction where law and equity procedure has been fused—that is to say, in a majority of all the countries governed by people who speak our language.

It is not true, and it never was true, that the common-law pleading was the perfection of human reason. The history of that system of pleading will not sustain any such assertion. The theory that every transaction can, for the purposes of judicial investigation, be reduced to a single disputed point, was found to be impracticable, and it was attempted to be remedied by 4 Anne ch. 16, which permitted the defendant to plead, by leave of the court, as many several matters as he saw fit. From the passage of that act to the present time it has been found utterly impossible, even in the common law courts, to administer justice on the theory theretofore in use. The act was the death blow to the doctrine. It was a necessary evolution in the system. Under the codes, or the new system, the theory of singleness has been abandoned, and an answer substituted for a plea. Code pleading is the system produced by amalgamating pleading at law and

pleading in equity, with the consequent loss of the inconsistent features of both systems. Code pleading is the protest of an era of practical business-like methods against the refinements and subtleties of a darker age.

You will doubtless pardon me for stopping a few minutes to say a word or two about the horrible criminal code of the England of the eighteenth century, as compared with the humane laws of the Victorian era. To steal a horse or a sheep, to snatch property from the hands of a man and run away with it, to steal to the amount of forty shillings in a dwelling-house, or privately to the value of five shillings in a shop, to pick a pocket of only twelve pence and a farthing, were all crimes under the law punishable by death until the very end of the eighteenth century. All of the executions were public. Reforms were violently opposed, for no task is so repulsive as that of unlearning in declining years the lessons that have been learned in the morning of life. The question to be determined is, whether the proposed change is needed, and not whether it is unpleasant to have to acquire knowledge of a new system. No lawyer ever gets pay for the time he wastes over modes of procedure, so both client and counsel suffer from delays of this character.

Great dissatisfaction has arisen both in the legal profession and amongst the general public, especially the mercantile classes, with the working of our present systems of procedure. There is no wild reforming zeal among those who are interested in these questions, but a widespread feeling that something must be done. For a number of years our Court of Appeals has had the right to recommend the needed changes; but it is a right which it cannot find time to exercise. In all of our business centres there are associations of men engaged in business having arbitration committees. It is not that they care anything for the simple costs of litigation that they seek to arbitrate their differences; but it is the dread of technicalities and delays originating in the machinery of justice. It may not be possible to establish tribunals of commerce for the relief of mercantile litigation, nor desirable, but it is within the power of this Association to greatly facilitate the administration of justice by simply adopting the resolution recommended by the committee. There is a falling

off of important commercial business in the courts, and the adoption of this resolution will be one of the methods to induce its return. It is our duty to do all that we can to solve the problem of giving to the country courts of justice where the two sciences. of law and equity procedure are fused, to which the people can resort without fear of the terrors which admittedly surround litigation on every hand at present and frighten suitors from the doors. The delay is the chief trouble. One State in our Union has adopted the practice as recommended by way of argument in the report of your committee-it did so in 1879-and from that State no complaint has since been made on account of delay in the administration of justice. It is the only State in the Union from which there is no such complaint. The traditional methods of legal procedure, unless carefully reformed, will be found insufficient to supply the needs of the present generation of business men. A little patching up here and there is possible, but any relief will be inadequate unless some real change is made to expedite causes in the manner suggested by the report of your committee.

It is beyond controversy that the ancients believed that their laws came from the gods. For this reason none of them could be repealed. Men made new laws, but the old ones still remained, and the old and the new had to be interpreted together. The Code of Draco was not abrogated by that of Solon. A long period elapsed before the laws were written, and Aristotle tells us that at one time they were sung. The Romans called the laws carmina-verses. It was sacrilege to displace a word or to alter the rhythm. To destroy the form was to destroy the law itself. It was like prayer, agreeable to the divinity only on condition that it was correctly recited. Its value was not in the moral principle that it contained, but in the sacred words of which it was composed.

But we think in different channels, and with us, law is born of the idea of justice. There is nothing sacred about it where it fails to answer the demands of modern society. Even within the present century it has undergone great changes, and if, in the language of the greatest writer on the jurisprudence of our country, it is a seamless garment overhanging all the world, and we

are citizens of the State and its subjects, it is destined to undergo greater changes still.

A blind spirit of reverence can never wholly overcome progress. The reform, it is true, is a revolution, but revolutions, when they are the work of the people themselves, are the best evidence of progress and prosperity, because to the moral quality of indignation, produced by the presence of evil, they add the intellectual qualities of foresight and combination; and uniting in the same act some of the highest properties of our nature, they achieve a double purpose, not only punishing the oppressor, but also relieving the oppressed. There is no punishment to be meted out to the oppressor here, for the oppressor in this case is the effete old common law modes of procedure.

The great changes which appear from time to time in the constitution of society spring from the intelligence of man himself. Our intelligence is never at rest, but always progressing; and on this account our institutions and our laws are subject to change.

We are the heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of time—

"Forward, forward, let us range;

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change."

W. P. McRae, of Petersburg: Mr. President,-I move that the report be received and recorded, and the resolution, as recommended by the committee, be adopted.

The President: The motion is made that the report be received and recorded. If there is no objection the report will be received and recorded. The Secretary will please read the resolution.

The Secretary then read the resolution accompanying the report of the Special Committee on Law Reform, made at the last annual meeting, as follows:

"Resolved, That it is the sense of this Association that law and equity procedure should be consolidated, so that legal and equitable rights can be administered in one form of action."

W. R. McKenney, of Petersburg: Mr. President,-May I ask a question? I want to find out whether the remarks read by Mr. Patteson are the report of the committee or the individual views