Old Foes with New Faces." ANNUAL ADDRESS BY HON. WALTER CLARK, OF RALEIGH, N. C. Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Virginia State Bar Association: Your distinguished Senator, John W. Daniel, in opening his address to your body last year said: "It is a great honor to be invited to address the Virginia State Bar Association." I appreciate that honor and make my acknowledgments. give you one and all the greetings of fraternity. I Lawyers and Virginians: In both capacities I feel very near to you. There is a mystic tie which binds all lawyers together, wherever and under whatever circumstances they may meet. If there are but two there is straightway an argument and if they are a thousand, there is still fraternity and good fellowship. I was tempted to say "Fellow-Lawyers," but I remember that a well known gentleman, in an address at the banquet in honor of the Centennial of the United States Supreme Court, began by saying "Fellow-Lawyers-for we are all lawyers here," and then glancing at the row of justices, added with a bow, "except the judges." However, one of them got even with him, for I find that Justice Brewer, in an address before the American Bar Association, at Detroit in 1895 (Vol. XVIII., p. 453), used these words, "It would be a blessing to the profession and to the community as well, if some Noachian deluge would engulf half of those who have a license to practice law." But then he is an appointive and life-tenure judge, who has not retained the elbow touch of judges who remember the kindly support of comrades into whose ranks they may one day return, and who, for both reasons, are averse to setting a precedent for drowning out half of the profession at a dip. I confess to having always felt satisfaction in knowing that when our Saviour denounced, "Woe, unto you also, ye lawyers, who lade men with burdens grievous to borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers," and that when the evangelist spoke of "a certain lawyer who stood up tempting Him," there was no reference to our profession. The only law at that time was the Mosaic law. The law students then, unlike those of this day, studied theology. If there is any inherited damnation to be imputed on account of those incidents, it is not our profession that falls heir to it. Besides, whoever heard of one of our lawyers refusing to lighten his client of any burden. Then, too, as Virginians, you are my next-door neighbors. The first governor North Carolina ever had, Governor Drummond, one of your governors did us the honor to hang-and the two States have hung together ever since. Drummond, after the expiration of his office, moved over here and got into some sort of rebellion, a spirit which lingered long in your atmosphere. Being captured and brought before Governor Berkely, the latter said, "Mr. Drummond, I am happy to see you. I had rather see you than any other man in Virginia. Mr. Drummond, you shall be hanged in half an hour."--and he was. But our Governors were not then chosen by our people, but were sent to us and we had Governors to burn in those days-if anybody had chosen to do it, instead of hanging them. We had half a dozen rebellions and chased two or three Governors out of the province before our colony was forty years old. Senator Daniel in his address last year boasted of Virginia having had a rebellion 100 years before the Revolution. Why, along about that time, it was the only kind of government we had. North Carolinians from that day down to this, have been the easiest people in the world to govern, if you will only let them boss the job themselves. Our people have never specially resented your executing our first ex-Governor, but you will note that the historic remark of a most friendly nature, by one of our later Governors, was made by him to the Governor of the State south of us. There are no States in the whole Union, whose people have been more closely connected by ties of blood, of intermarriage and close identity of interest and political views than North Carolina and Virginia. Owing to the nature of our coast, our commercial dealings have been largely with Virginia towns, and Norfolk, Petersburg, Richmond, Lynchburg and Danville have not only absorbed much of our trade, but many of our people have gone to swell the prosperity of those thriving cities. Before the Revolution, North Carolina sent a regiment to Winchester to your aid under charge of Col. James Innes, who assumed, by seniority of rank, command of the forces, George Washington being second in command. During the long and doubtful struggle for independence, the two States stood shoulder to shoulder, as they have done ever since. In the long civil contests down to 1861 their views on all great questions were the same. Together your people and ours went down into the deep waters of the great and never to be forgotten struggle of 1861-5, and together you went through the hell of Re-construction, and to-day you stand together, with recollections of common sufferings and common sacrifices, redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled by the irresistible might of our race and rejoicing in the beneficent light of Anglo-Saxon civilization and Anglo-Saxon supremacy. When in 1861, Virginia called for aid, we poured our troops like an Alpine torrent across your southern border. During those four eventful years, whose memory shall never be forgotten, your soil was baptized and sanctified by the blood of our sons as well as yours. Your valleys echoed to the tread of our marching columns and to-day your mountains cast their morning shadows and their evening shades across the graves where sleep North Carolina's gallant dead. There is not an historic spot of those four years, which is not a household word in my State. There is not a stricken field, where rest not the remains of some whose names are preserved in loving memory by North Carolina firesides. Can we do ought than love the soil of Virginia, when it has received the blood of our best and bravest and when the very names of her battlefields recall the brightest and most glorious recollections of our history. Lawyers and Virginians, I feel that I am not a stranger in a strange land. In boyhood, I knew your valleys and your mountains well. With your sons, I have forded the Potomac at midnight, and when the battleflags were tossing amid the smoke of battle, I have seen your brave sons move forward to the harvest of death. I have heard the shriek of the shell as they burst over your devoted towns and cities. I have seen the flames in which went up to heaven your homes and firesides, a willing offering to the cause you loved so well. Among Virginians and on Virginia soil, I feel that I am home again and in the bosom of my friends. Hooker eloquently said, "Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care and the greatest as not exempted from her power." He was, however, speaking of law in its broadest sense. Municipal law is usually defined as "a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in the State, commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong." But since what the supreme power commands is necessarily right from the standpoint of legality and what it prohibits is wrong, it would be more correct to say simply that law is the will of the supreme power in the State. What is that Supreme Power? That is the question always debated and never more acute than now. A free country is one where public opinion is the supreme power and where the will of the majority faithfully formulated by the public servants freely chosen is duly executed. As Edmund Burke once said, "The people |