quietly withdrawing, or of standing a trial before the Honor Committee. This committee is made up of the presidents of the classes of the five departments of the University, and the vice president of the class of which the accused is a member. The trial may be in private or in public, as the accused may elect. If he elect a public trial, the members of his class, together with such friends as the accused may desire, are admitted, but no others. Either side may be represented by student counsel. The proceedings are summary, and from the decision of this committee there is no appeal.

If the accused be in fact guilty-as has proved to be the case in, I believe, ninety per cent. of the accusations made -the filing of the charges usually insures his departure on the next train, without awaiting a trial, or even a bill of particulars.

In rare instances the culprit has shown a bold front, and made defense. His conviction is uniformly followed by an order of immediate expulsion by the Honor Committee. There are no minor penalties.

No case is remembered where the student remained in the University after conviction. Refusal promptly to obey the order of expulsion is practically an inconceivable situation; but I am sure the lecture rooms would be empty, and police calls frequent, while the students were engaged in executing their decree.

If the impression has been created on your minds that these accusations are of frequent occurrence, let me repeat that, as student and teacher, I have been in residence at the University and in intimate contact with its student life for nineteen years. During that time I have known of less than a score of accusations made, in the aggregate, from all departments of the University. During a connection of seventeen years with the

Law School as teacher, and for the greater portion of that time as dean of the department-within which period the total attendance of law students has exceeded two thousand-there have come to my knowledge less than a half dozen instances of a charge of suspicious conduct on the part of a law student. Probably no case escaped my observation since the custom of the Honor Committee is to advise with the dean as amicus curiæ in all such cases arising in his department. It may be added that in one of these cases only did the accused demand a trial; and that the strong prima facie case made against him was satisfactorily proved to have been merely a thoughtless imprudence, and his acquittal resulted. In the other three or four cases the accused took leg bail, and stood not upon the order of their going.

One not familiar with the honor system may well inquire how is obtained the consent of the students, as individuals and as a mass, to accept this code of honor; and how is the spirit kept alive, with the rapid and constant changes that take place in every college constituency.

Of the difficulties, if any, that our predecessors in the faculty had in ingrafting the system upon our University life I may not speak for lack of information. But its introduction was at a time when the student body was made up of relatively small numbers, and composed, to a large extent-as it still is, but in less degree of the sons of wealthy and aristocratic Southern families. These sons, whatever may have been their faults in other directions, held chivalrous notions of honor, and were quick to defend their own honor, and to resent the want of it in others. Such a code doubtless appealed strongly to their aristocratic fancies. At any rate, the bud grafted into the student life in 1842 found a congenial parent stock, and has bourgeoned and

borne fruit after its kind with each succeeding season.

The continuity and vigor of the system have been fostered by the circumstance that through the influence of graduates sent out as teachers it has been transplanted into many of the colleges and preparatory schools from which come most of our students. Hence a considerable majority of the freshmen come to us already familiar with the system, and in sympathy with it. These, with the returned members of the higher classes, each one of whom is a loyal disciple of the system, make it possible to begin each session with but a comparatively small number of raw recruits to be broken in. Nor, as already stated, are these long in learning the privileges and penalties of the system, for the atmosphere is vibrant with it. Its appeal to the best there is in them, soon converts the young barbarians into earnest, selfrespecting disciples.

The effects of the honor system on the University life have already, in part, been indicated. Not only has the problem of securing honesty in the examinations been solved, but incidentally many other problems of student government. The spirit of truth and honor fostered in the examination room has gradually pervaded the entire life of the institution. It has awakened the conscience of the student body, and developed a public opinion that exercises a wholesome and potent influence on student thought, manners, and deportment. And, best of all, the spirit of the system does not die with college days, but follows the graduate into the greater world outside.

That the honor system, as it exists at the University of Virginia, is a genuine and a practical thing, and that it has wrought the results that I have endeavored to present to you, and more, is not,

and has not been within the past half century, a debatable question among members of the faculty, nor among the undergraduates, nor the thousands of graduates distributed the nation over; nor among the informed public at large. These with one voice bear the same testimony in its behalf. It is no longer a theory, but a condition.

I have created a false impression, however, if I have led you to believe that the students of our University are unwinged saints, or that the honor system has tamed their youthful spirits, or drawn the red blood from their veins. Doubtless, they sow, with each recurring season, the same overabundant crop of wild oats which, in the false philosophy of youth, students have been sowing since the world was young. I testify, on personal knowledge, that the system has not eradicated the evils of idleness and cutting of lectures. A gentleman may not lie, nor cheat, nor steal-but he may abhor the confinement of the lecture room, and detest the contemplation of contingent estates, and be a gentleman still. And so the honor system has steadily refused to relieve the dean of his weekly interviews with gentlemen of leisure.

Objection has been made that the honor system compels or encourages one student to report the delinquencies of his fellows. Such objection should have little force with members of a bar association, under whose code of ethics the duty rests upon every member to bring to the notice of the court instances of unprofessional conduct on the part of his brothers of the bar, that they may be weeded out from the profession they have disgraced. In the same manner social clubs, religious bodies, literary and scientific organizations, financial exchanges-indeed all human organizations in which the moral character of the in

dividual is important in determining his fitness as a member-protect themselves against unworthy associates.

In the honor system there is no compulsion, other than that exerted by one's own sense of duty to the student body of which he is a member-the same compulsion that impels you to file charges against a professional brother for betrayal of a trust, or which leads a good citizen to report to the police, or to the grand jury, a crime that has come under his observation. Nor, until a student has by his conduct given cause for suspicion, is there the slightest espionage upon his movements by his fellows. The atmosphere is not one of distrust and suspicion, but precisely the reverse. The system demands and secures, not only faculty trust in the students' integrity, but the confidence of his fellows as well.

Further objection has been made-and this comes from too high a source to be passed by lightly-that under the honor system the faculty cannot personally guarantee the honesty of the examinations, and therefore the value of the degree is lowered. I hope that I have already said enough to convince those of you who have been good enough to follow my treatment of the theme thus far that under the honor system, as we know it at Virginia, there could be no surer guaranty of honesty of an examination than the pledged-or even the unpledged -honor of the student, under the environment that I have described. The examination is written, not in the presence of a few monitors, nor in an environment where deception of the hired detective is, perhaps not unnaturally, regarded as a clever performance, and a matter for jest—or, at least, a mere peccadillo-but in the presence of the candidate's classmen, not one of whom would hesitate to challenge his honesty for cause, and in an environment where dishonesty in the

examination room is not distinguished, in name or nature, from the same offense in the counting room or the courtroom.

By the same token, it may be asked, who will personally certify to the integrity or the detective skill of the monitors? How, under the monitorial system, may the faculty certify, of its own knowledge, to the honesty of the examination, when the employment of the deputies is in itself a confession that the faculty is unwilling or unable personally to guarantee the desired fairness? Pursuing the argument until you tire of it, what assurance has the American nation, other than their unchallenged records as men of honor, that its chief magistrate, or the judges of its highest court, are worthy of their great trusts? No detectives dog their footsteps to spy out their transgressions, and the door of opportunity for evil is wide open.

This objection assumes that young men are less worthy of trust than their elders. The facts do not justify the assumption. Other things being equal, my observation has been that an appeal to conscience finds its readiest response in the bosom of youth. Experience has taught me to place the same confidence in the honor and manhood of the student as in my colleagues of the faculty. Such is the general sentiment of my colleagues, and such our practice. We give the student the same credit for honesty in the part he plays in the examination, and for truth in every statement made to us officially, as we expect him to extend to us in our rôle as judges of his work.

Occasionally, in rarest instances, we do suspect a student of untruthfulness. Every college teacher knows the college invalid-the scamp who is well enough to be regular at all exercises except those of the lecture room. Curiously enough. the moral pervert will lie to his dean or professor in excusing his idleness or dis

sipation, but will be honest on his examination. This means that he fears his fellows more than he fears the faculty a truth of general application under the honor system. Such cases require much. delicacy of handling. To be consistent To be consistent with the honor system, we accept his statements, and excuse his delinquencies, until patience itself ceases to be honorable. At this point we send the sick man home, with the gentle admonition that a real mother is a better nurse for an invalid than an alma mater.

If further proof be needed of the honesty of the examinations, we reach it inductively. Year after year, we find it possible, with considerable accuracy, to foretell the result of the examinations. There are never violent surprises. The diligent and intelligent student passes, while the dullard and the idler fail. Presumably it is the latter class to whom cheating would be a temptation.

I hold no brief for the adoption of the honor system in law schools now strangers to it. Its attempted introduction into new territory to which the system would come as a suspected exotic would doubtless meet with many discouragements at the beginning. There are probably law schools where, from local conditions, the effort might be of doubtful expediency. But surely we are all on common ground in the conviction that every law student should learn from the beginning of his professional studies, if no earlier, that, as an apprentice to a noble profession, he should cultivate and practice the same principles of fair dealing in his college relations that he will be expected afterwards to exhibit in his professional relations.

If we, as law teachers, are to deal lightly with deception and dishonesty in the examination room, or out of it, and to excuse these offenses as necessary or customary evils of college life, when,

may I ask, shall our complaisance cease, and when shall our virtuous indignation at dishonesty begin? at dishonesty begin? May the future. lawyer cheat his way into the college, and out of it-into and through the law school-repeat the offense on his examination for admission to the bar, and then suddenly develop into the clean, high practitioner-the honest guardian. of his clients' interests, and the faithful servitor in the courts of his country? Is the practice of the law, with all the temptations it presents, a better school for training one's ethical sense than the study of the law, under teachers selected as well for their high character as for their learning?

These questions are left to your consideration.

If, in this discussion, the evils existing in many of our law schools have been magnified, the error is to be attributed to the same colossal ignorance of the facts. on my part that I have already charged against censors of the honor system. The impressions presented were derived from hearsay, and from possibly irresponsible publications in the press.

If the evils suggested do exist, in greater or less degree, this reference to them would be gratuitous, were no remedy suggested. A word on this subject, and I shall cease to tax your patience.

Such is my faith in any body of youth, possessing the courage and ambition to undertake the severe regimen requisite to a legal education, that I do not doubt that, left to their own devices, they would themselves evolve some such system as I have described, by whatever name it might be called.

The essential conditions would be the abolition of all espionage by the faculty or its deputies-the turning over of the examination room completely and unreservedly to the candidates-and the grading, by the faculty, of every paper

according to its face value. The requirement of the pledge is a nonessential; for, after all, save in the case of a few moral weaklings, it is not the written pledge that restrains, but the innate honesty of the student, reinforced by a wholesome public opinion. In short, the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive. Anarchy might rule for a time; the newfound liberty might be outrageously abused; the value of the degree might be temporarily sacrificed; but the results would be well worth the cost.

In a peculiarly hostile environment such discouraging conditions might continue long enough to exhaust the patience and disappoint the hopes of the authorities. But if the latter show the proper courage and consistency-not for a moment wavering in the experiment— the instinct of self-protection among the better class of students would eventually solve the problem. The better element -always in the ascendancy-would tire of the spectacle of undeserved honors won by unfair means, and of degrees conferred on wretched swindlers. And if a revolution did not, sooner or later, bring order out of chaos, I have misinterpreted the disposition and spirit of the American law student. From the conflict would be evolved a system of law, and order, and decency, enforced by the students themselves-and a system more effective than could be attained by an army of monitors.

In brief, Gentlemen of the Association, the honor system, or some similar system, is the logical and imperative outcome of absolute trust of the student body-of regarding college students as men and not children-of the substitution of a democratic for an autocratic form of student government. Neither this system nor any similar one can survive on half-hearted trust. Where the confidence is unreserved, it cannot die.

In such a system, the result is both ob

jective and subjective. jective and subjective. The student responds to the confidence reposed by keeping faith with the faculty and with his fellows and himself learns the invaluable lesson of using liberty without li

cense.

On this principle our forefathers founded this great republic. I present it to you as the true principle of government for the smaller republics of whose destinies you are the guardians. There can be no real virtue where there is no opportunity for vice. Remove freedom of choice between good and evil, and character ceases to develop. No morality was ever created by legislative ordinances, nor preserved by police supervision.

Discussion

E. G. Lorenzen, Dean George Washington University Law School.

In the discussion of the honor system it becomes necessary in the first place to determine what is meant by it. Is it, as its name would suggest, a system resting essentially upon student honor, or is it merely synonymous with student supervision of examinations as contrasted with faculty supervision? If it is to be understood in the former sense, all discussion of student honor and its existence in the institutions of the South and of the North, in those located in the smaller towns and those situated in the great commercial centers of to-day, becomes very pertinent. It has much less, and comparatively little, bearing upon the issue if we mean by the honor system merely student supervision in the conduct of examination.

Now it happens that the so-called honor system in its origin was in fact based exclusively upon the student's honor as a gentleman. Let me call your attention to certain provisions of a statute passed July 6, 1830, for the good government of the College of William and Mary:

"If the society of President Masters and Professors or any member of it shall believe that a Student or Students have in any manner misbehaved or have been idle or inattentive to his studies, it shall be the duty of the Society to appoint one or more of their own body to confer with and advise in pri