today.

In this State we have been comparatively backward in law reform making future interests alienable. *** A distinct change, however, in the direction of the alienability has nevertheless been recently effected by our Supreme Court's changing the common law or feudal definition of a vested interest when the question of alienability arises. * * Such was the beneficent innovation wrought by the recent case of Boatman v. Boatman." The learned Professor presented his bouquet too soon, for in less than six months thereafter-the personnel of the court having been changed by the election of five new members— in the Knock case, 235 Ill. 412, 421, the Supreme Court, by a unanimous vote, squarely overruled the Boatman case, the opinion being delivered by one of the new members. The Professor, in stating the law as established by the Boatman case, should have been as cautious in his statement as was the man, who, stamping a letter and being uncertain as to the adhesive quality of the stamp, wrote on the envelope, below the stamp: "Paid if the darn thing sticks."

Overruled cases are also to be found in the United States Supreme Court Reports, and even as to them the explanation is occasionally to be found in changed personnel of the court. Thus: In Hepbern v. Griswold, 8 Wallace 603, the court held void the statute making greenbacks legal tender, by a four to three opinion. Then Congress added another judge to the court, and another was appointed to fill the vacancy, and afterwards when the same question was again brought before the court, in Legal Tender Cases, 12 Wallace 457, the Hepbern-Griswold case was squarely overruled on a five to four opinion. First, four to three that the statute was invalid; afterwards, five to four that the statute was valid.

If the members of these courts, United States Supreme and Illinois Supreme, were of the mental caliber of the ordinary justice of the peace, their failure to agree with each other or to adhere to their first decisions, might well be ac

counted for on the theory of inadvertence in the application of the law; but no explanation except uncertainty of the law itself can suffice in the case of courts composed, as these have been and are, of the very flower of the legal profession.

Some layman may ask: "If the law is so uncertain that lawyers, whether judges or advocates, so very frequently cannot agree as to what it is, why not dispense with courts?" As long as human nature remains what it is, differences and contentions will arise and they must be settled somehow, either peaceably or with force and violence that will more or less disturb the public. Man is only finite, and the experience of ages shows that settlement through courts is the best method that the wit of man has yet been able to devise. Whatever else may be said of them, even by the most bitterly disappointed litigant, courts afford a peaceable, if not always a satisfactory method of putting an end to strife. As was said in the Darrow case, 177 Ill. 362, 366, "Rules are established, some by the legislature, some by the courts themselves, for the purpose of putting an end to litigation, and it is more important that an end should be put to litigation than that justice should be done in every case."

In a sense, courts are to the community what the chimney is to a dwelling house. The chimney may not always draw well, but who would dispense with it, and, like the Indian in his wigwam, suffer constantly from the smoke and gases of daily unavoidable fires?

And so in concluding this review I submit, that it is uncertainty of the law-uncertainty resulting mainly from the fact that, owing to the limitations of finite mind, different judges and jurors frequently differ in their views of the same matters, and, as the result of further observation and reflection, judges sometimes change, their views-it is uncertainty of the law, and not anything in the character or conduct of lawyers as a class, that is The Cause of the Quips about Lawyers.

ADDRESS OF ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE

OF INDIANAPOLIS

"JOHN MARSHALL AND THE CONSTITUTION.”

HONORABLE ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE:

President Brown,

and Gentlemen of the Bar Association: I want, in the first place, to thank him and you for the very great honor of being asked to speak to you today. I esteem it a real distinction, and I appreciate it. I am particularly glad that President Brown told you about the condition that I made in coming. I meant what I said when I wrote him that I thought the importance of this great Association, and the dignity of our profession, was such that your annual address should be a very carefully prepared one, a written one, and that I did not think then, and I do not think now that an extemporaneous talk is worthy of the dignity of this unusual assemblage. And besides, I do not like extemporaneous speeches. I do not like to make one, and I do not like to hear one. I have two objections. The first one is that the extemporaneous speaker seldom says anything; and the second, and more serious objection is that he seldom gets through saying it. (Laughter). The extemporaneous speaker, in my experience, in his address. resembles very much what William M. Evarts, that great statesman and great lawyer, said of his sentences. You will recall at one time when he was making an argument before the Supreme Court of the United States in a railroad case, he used one of his interminable sentences. He never got through his sentences, they sometimes occupied two or three pages of a brief. They were as long as Henry James' sentences. So, in the midst of this argument he got tangled up in one of those sentences, and stopped and said to the Court, "Your Honors will perceive that my sentences resemble this railroad-they lack terminal facilities."