of learning put together; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and liberalize the mind precisely in the same proportion."

In this country, where the lawyer is not only the expounder of the law, but the maker of the law, this tendency is particularly unfortunate. This is not the age for "quaint pedantry and scholastic riddles." Antiquarian research is very interesting, but the people want laws that fulfill modern needs and conditions. Our fault is not so much in the making of bad laws as in acquiescence and indifference; want of action, disinclination to disturb what is from the fear of what might be.

To use the language of a distinguished lawyer, our "training has been like that of the Flathead Indians; it has compressed our brain with common law bandages, even to the extent that the eyes of the mind have become inverted and look only backward." There are said to be now at least 6,000 volumes of law reports, averaging 700 pages each, making 4,200,000 pages of decisions. Reading 50 pages a day, 230 years would be consumed in reading the decisions to date. Sixteen thousand cases are being decided each year, so that when the first 230 years of reading have been completed, there would be another equally large accumulation. An industrious legal Methuselah, reading and knowing the contents of this immense mass of reports, need still not know the law, for he would find almost every question decided in more ways than one. Often the same court decides the same question in several different ways. Surely "confusion now hath made its masterpiece."

The certainty of the law is the value of the law. In many of the departments this certainty can only be had by legislation. I am aware that many share the opinion of Anacharsis, who, when he heard of Solon's work in writing the law, said that "written laws in all respects resembled spiders' webs, and would, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful easily broke them." But surely a written law, approaching certainty, is better than a law which does not even pretend to certainty. If the rule adopted by the Athenians, according to Plutarch, was applied to our law-makers, it is very likely that, while absolute perfection would not be reached, it

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would be approached. Plutarch says that "under the constitution of Athens, after a law was voted and passed in the assembly of the people, the proposer of the law might be cited in an ordinary civil court, tried and brought to punishment if the court was of the opinion that the law was prejudicial to the public."

There has never been a period in the world's history when legislation in behalf of certainty was more needed. The business of a great mercantile people is dependent in large measure for its prosperity upon protection of the law-upon the law being plain and uniform-upon their being able to contract with reference to laws understood by both parties. The Emperor Caligula has received, and justly received, the censure of mankind for requiring the Roman people to obey laws written in such small characters and placed so high upon pillars that they were illegible. We, in the latter part of this nineteenth century, are as uncertain and ignorant of the law in many of its departments as were the Roman people under Caligula. This condition of affairs will continue "until a second Omar shall rise up, in the order of Providence, to burn our books, or the courts shall agree a little more generally," or order be brought out of chaos by legislation.

The improbability of either of the first two means of relief is so great that, in my opinion, we will have to depend upon the third. As a matter of fact, the confusion of the law cannot be remedied by the courts. They are bound hand and foot by precedent. Different courts may and do easily find and follow different sets of precedents; reason has very little weight against decided cases-a decision or line of decisions is followed whether there be reason for it or not.

A quotation from a decision of the New York Court of Appeals will be instructive here. In the case of Bertles v. Nunan, 92 N. Y., 165, that court says:

"It is said that the reason upon which the common law rule under consideration was based has ceased to exist, and hence that the rule should be held to disappear. It is impossible now to determine how the rule in the remote past obtained a footing, or upon what reason it was based, and hence it is impossible now to say that the reason, whatever it was, has entirely ceased to exist. There are many rules appertaining to the ownership of real property originating in the feudal ages, for the existence of which the

reason does not now exist or is not discernible, and yet on that account courts are not authorized to disregard them."

In other words, says this nineteenth century court, laws that were created to meet the wants and necessities of a past age and a different civilization have to be maintained as the law of conduct for the people of New York, although the reason of the law, if there ever was a reason, has been lost in the misty past. Surely Lord Coke spoke advisedly when he told King James that the reason of the law is not "natural reason."

I am not one of those who believe that the lawyer has no need of a knowlege of the history of the law, of its condition and progress in its different periods; but I do believe that there is too much mediævalism in the law; that it is weighted down by antiquity; that we are accustomed to live too much in a different age from our own; to mould our actions in accordance with the views of a different century; to look backwards instead of forwards.

I am aware that these very blemishes are considered by our lay friends as retained for the benefit of our profession-that its very uncertainty is believed to be for our profit. That this is an injustice we all know; but the only way of disabusing men's minds of this opinion is by taking a leading part in the work of improvement. The belief that lawyers, as a class, are interested in keeping the law ambiguous, uncertain, and costly is on a plane with the other belief, that moral obliquity and moral callousness are a necessary result of our training-there being many people in accord with the Germans who conquered Rome in their opinion about laws and lawyers. One of these barbarians, we are told, after the effectual precaution of cutting out the tongue of an advocate and sewing up his mouth, observed with much satisfaction that the viper could no longer hiss.

One belief is as false as the other, but they are due to different causes. One is due to the inability of the average man to disassociate the lawyer and client; the other is due in a large measure to our failure to perform our duty.

The great lawyer and philosopher, Sir Thomas Moore, in describing a perfect Commonwealth in his Utopia, says:

"They have few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many; they very much condemn other nations whose

laws, together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes, for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both of such a bulk and so dark as not to be read or understood by every one of the subjects."

How far we are from this condition I have tried in a measure to point out.

A lawyer in a recent address stated this fact:

"The law of bills of exchange, promissory notes and checks has been codified in England, with a codified statute containing one hundred sections, and, according to a statement of its author, it embodies two thousand English decisions and seventeen previous statutes, and reduces the law to about 1-5000 part of its former bulk."

This is a fair example of what may be done in many of the departments of the law. The law is at present looked upon, and in the main justly, as a piece of intricate machinery, contrived for the express purpose of being unintelligible to the masses and for the benefit of the lawyers.

The lawyer's duty to his profession and the community is second only, if second, to his duty to his clients. Our duty in the premises is plain; as far as possible, to discard uncertain, pernicious and antiquated matter incorporated in our laws and reports, and substitute wise, modern, certain and unambiguous laws. Absolute perfection cannot be had; absolute certainty pertains only to death and taxation; but we should have as nearly a perfect and certain set of laws as the wisdom of man can devise. The、 reproach that we have not should not remain upon a great and noble profession. The collection and arrangement of established legal principles in a concise and logical form, relieved of uncertainties, and the ambiguity and absurdity that has crept into the law, is work for lawyers, and lawyers alone. Behind us are the mighty examples in State craft, achieved by great Virginia lawyers—the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the law of descents, and the other great statutes known to every law. yer. Before us lies a work equal in magnitude and as rich in rewards and laurels. Our duty is plain; the reward is sure in the State's prosperity, in a satisfied people, and in the consciousness of work well done.