PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS.

the profession of the disgrace entailed upon it by countenancing such men. It may and ought so far to discredit them that if others see fit to employ them, they cannot charge their mistakes to the great body of the Bar. If they do employ them, it is because they want that class of service. All lawyers of high principle and honor ought to be as bold and outspoken in denouncing the dishonesty and trickery of those who have obtained a license to enter its ranks as of dishonesty and trickery elsewhere. The lawyers who do not do this are unfaithful to their oath of office and to their obligation to the general public.

YOUNG MEN OF THE BAR.

Young men of the Bar, you belong to a profession bearing the most influential and honored names in our history. Your lives are before you, and you may make them what you will. You know what names are held in reverence, and you know that they are not the names of the ignorant, the dishonest or depraved. Temporary success may attend the shrewd, tricky, unscrupulous lawyer, but his name is never found, in after generations, in the temple of fame. It is as true of the lawyer as of any other, that the name of the righteous shall be held in remembrance, but the memory of the wicked shall rot. In all things pertaining to your professional life and conduct, so live and so act that you retain your own self-respect, without which you have no right to look for the respect of others. Be always, if possible, on the side of right, where the questions are those of absolute right and wrong. Where they are questions of policy, be on the side of the better policy. Be bold, outspoken and earnest in the advo cacy of all that is right and best. Be equally outspoken, bold and earnest in the denunciation of all that is wrong or hurtful. So living, you will honor an honorable profession. See to it that you never soil the robe of the lawyer, or stain the ermine of the bench.

W. J. WHITE,

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NOTES ON THE SOURCES AND DEVELOPMENT

OF THE

LAW OF THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC.

W. J. WHITE, K. C., M. A., D. C. L.
Of the Montreal Bar.

Last fall, the Bar of the District of Montreal had the honor to entertain your representative, Mr. Justice Jesse Holdom, on the occasion of our Annual Dinner. In visiting the Court House, Judge Holdom noticed that proceedings were conducted in the French as well as the English language, that counsel in addressing the Court used both of these languages and that in some cases, where both the parties spoke French, the trial proceeded in that language alone. When I had accepted the courteous invitation of your Association to be present at this Annual Meeting, the Judge was good enough to say that a few notes by way of explanation of the use of the French law and the French language in the British Province of Quebec might be of interest.

To those of you who have studied the history of this continent, or even of this State of Illinois, what I shall have to say may lack in novelty as it will be already more or less familiar. To those of us who have sought to learn something of the history of our own Province of Quebec, the early history of this State was naturally included in the research, because, strange as it may seem, the limits of the Province of Quebec at one time extended as far westward as the Ohio and

SPECIAL ADDRESS.

comprised within its bounds what is today your prosperous and flourishing State of Illinois. You have preserved such names as Joliet, Marquette and LaSalle, pioneers in the field of exploration and missionary enterprise. The first white men to tread the shores of your Great Lakes were either natives of or residents in the Province of Quebec, and made their way up the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa either to promote their commercial interests by the fur trade or to spread the gospel amongst the Indian tribes who then roamed the forests.

Up to the year 1763 all the territory to the North of the then British colonies owed allegiance to the King of France, and in the Province of Quebec the French law exclusively was administered. This, as you will remember, was before the systematizing spirit of Napoleon had created the Code which bears his name, and which remains one of the finest monuments to his brilliant genius. Even at that time there had been various Codes, all deriving their inspiration from the great Code of Justinian and bearing the name of Coutumes or Customs, the chief of which was known as the Coutume de Paris and furnished the statutory law for the northern and central part of France. This Coutume de Paris was the text book of the Canadian lawyers, many of whom had been trained in France as it was then the custom to send out the law officers and other officials administering the government of the Province, and some of these were accompanied by their secretaries, also lawyers, or other students of the law who had come to settle in the colony.

The government of Quebec under the French King was in the hands of a Lieutenant Governor, associated with whom were an Intendant and the Bishop, and these formed what was called the Sovereign Council, from which you will sec that at that time there was no cleavage between Church and State. The Sovereign Council promulgated edicts and ordinances, either introducing and enregistering French laws