ANNUAL ADDRESS.

DELIVERED BEFORE THE ILLINOIS STATE BAR ASSOCIATION, AT CHICAGO, JULY 17, 1902.

JOHN S. STEVENS, PRESIDENT.

The by-laws of our Association require that the President, in his annual address, shall embody recent changes in the law, its present state and administration, with his recommendations in respect thereto. As there have been no changes in the law since our last meeting, and as the report of the Practice Commission, with discussion thereon, will present the present state of the law, and recommendations in respect thereto, more thoroughly and understandingly than I can, I have decided to depart from the usual custom, and to address the Association upon some such matters as affect the standing of the profession, its influence at the present time, and its condition in the future in its relation to the political, business and social life of the people.

The general influence and standing of the Bar have been a prolific theme for writers and orators of acknowledged preeminence in the profession. Upon this theme nothing new can be said, nor can it be presented in any new light, nor can any new suggestions be made; but as changes constantly occur in the political, business and social world, and as the profession changes by the introduction into its ranks of hundreds and thousands each year, it may not be wholly amiss to remind the younger members, at least, of the influence of the Bar in the past, its standing in the present, and suggest some of its future relations, obligations and responsibilities to the

PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS.

body politic. That the profession of the law was the most dominant and controlling influence in the formation of our Government, in the organization of the State Governments, in Legislation,-National and State,-will hardly be denied. The three so-called learned professions,-Law, Medicine and Divinity, embraced, in the early days of our history, most of the liberally educated men of the country. Of these three the profession of the law always has been by far the most influential in all things pertaining to the government of the country and of the States, and to the shaping of public policy.

Gladstone said

"As the God Terminus was an early symbol of the first form of property, so the word 'law' is the venerable emblem of the union of mankind in society. Its personal agents are hardly less important to the general welfare than its proscriptions, for neither statute nor parliament nor press is more essential to liberty than an absolutely free-spoken Bar. Considered as a mental training, the profession of the Bar is probably, in its kind, the most perfect and thorough of all professions. For this very reason, perhaps, it has something like an intellectual mannerism of its own, and admits of being tempered with advantage by other pursuits lying beyond its own precincts, as well as by large intercourse with the world; by studies,-not only such as those of art and poetry, which have beauty for their objects,—but such as history, which opens the whole field of human motive, as well as an art which is not tied in the same degree to positive and immediate issues, and which, introducing w.der laws of evidence, gives far more scope for suspense of judgment; or, in other words, more exact conformity or more close approximation between the mind and the truth, which is, in all things, its proper object. No change, practical or speculative, social or political or economic, has any terrors for the profession of the law."

*

*

To the non-professional, such a tribute to the Bar by this most eminent of recent English statesmen may seem extrav agant and unmerited; yet, when we consider, even in our own country, what was done by the earlier members of the profession, in the preparation and adoption of our constitution, in its interpretation along the broad lines of the high

JOHN S. STEVENS.

est judicial ability and statesmanship, the tribute seems not undeserved. Accepting the results of the deliberations and work of the great men of the formative period, we seldom stop to think of their preparation for the work accomplished. Thoughtlessly we attribute the result of their scholarship, their learning, their deliberations, to genius, exceptional in any day or generation. Genius, so-called, is rare. It cannot be accounted for along any of the lines of heredity. It is sporadic, exceptional, and often one sided. The genius of those members of our profession who were instrumental in the formation of our government, was the genius of development, of knowledge gleaned from the history of all the past, of broad, liberal education and culture, as much so as the conditions and circumstances of the age afforded.

Madison. Hamilton, Jefferson and their associates who formulated the Declaration of Independence, and secured the adoption of the Constitution, were not inspired save by that inspiration which comes from thoroughly cultivated talents and thorough knowledge of the experience of the preceding ages in matters of statesmanship and government. When Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence,-the result of the combined efforts of himself and his associates,-it was the product of the most thorough and comprehensive knowledge of the condition of nations and peoples, from which was inherited the spirit of independence. The Constitution, as framed and adopted through the instrumentality of these men and others like them, was not the result of accident or inspiration, but that of minds disciplined by a thorough course of training and habits of thought along the lines of the law, and dispositions and temperaments controlled by a comprehensive knowledge of the principles of the law, and with infinite respect therefor. There had been great law makers in the past, whose codes had been tested by people under varied circumstances and conditions, and the results were studied by those who framed our Constitution and were re

PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL ADDRESS.

sponsible for the enactment of the earlier laws thereunder. It was by no means an accident that the interpretation of our laws was committed to Marshall and his associates. In those early formative days of our country's history, the Bar was recognized as the repository of the political learning and statesmanship of all the past.

The training of the lawyer for his profession was such as to make him respect the law. It taught him early that one of the first things for man to learn was self-control and obedience, not only to the law of the land, but to the higher law of his nature and being. Such training, as was said by Gladstone, tended to settle the spirits of a man firmly upon the center of gravity. It tended to self-command, self-government, and that general self-respect which has in it nothing of self-worship, for it is the reverence that each man ought to feel for the nature that God has given him, and for the laws of that nature. It is true that the matters engaging the lawyer's attention then were infinitely less complex and multifarious than in this age; but it must also be remembered that they had less facilities and opportunities for acquiring knowledge. But they were men, if not the readers and students of many books, yet thorough readers and students of what they had. They were diligent, thoughtful and conscientious students of the past. They thought out for themselves the possible results in our own land, of the application of the laws and principles that had governed and controlled nations in the past. They saw the weakness of other governments. They considered the elements of strength and durability; and yet it must be remembered that they had no precedents for the establishment of such a government as ours, under a specific, organic law.

This may seem to relate more to politics and statesmanship than to the profession of the law; but it was through and by means of the education of these men in the law, that they were enabled to build so well. There were radical differences