Association, with practical unanimity, declared against the passage of all of them except one, and that was a bill for the correction of a small technical defect in an existing law.

In 1874 a Federal Code was prepared. Since that time there has been no general revision although some years ago Congress directed a special committee to prepare and submit a new Code. A newspaper article is authority for the statement that the report of this committee is a paper bound volume, weighing fifteen pounds, containing more than five million words, and three times as large as the Revised Statutes of 1874. The same article is authority for the statement that the Kansas statute contains 11,842 printed pages. In Missouri the last official revision of the statutes of that State consists of three volumes with a total of 13,890 sections and 4,282 pages, and in addition an index of 520 pages. In Illinois there has been no official revision of the statutes since the revision of 1874. Since that time our single volume statutes have been published by private individuals without official sanction or approval. The editorial work of these publications has been well and carefully done and it can be assumed that either Smith's, Cahill's or Hurd's Statutes now contain all of the general law of this State. One of the editions for 1921 has been examined. It contains 2014 pages of fine print with double columns. Each page contains approximately 1350 words or a total of more than 2,800,000 words. The Revised Statutes of 1874 was a single volume of 1105 pages, averaging 616 words to the page, or a total of more than 680,000 words. Thus in fifty years the statute law of Illinois has quadrupled in quantity, whatever may be the situation as to quality.

It is true that many of these present day statutes are administrative statutes for the regulation of cities, villages, drainage districts, park districts, school districts and the like. Many of them are definitive of official duties of our public servants. Many of them are necessary in a State with as large a population and with such diversified in

terests as ours. But the mass of litigation is there, thrown together in many instances without regard to what has gone before, until in nearly every volume of the reports of our Supreme Court we find the familiar language that two or more apparently conflicting statutes must be construed "in pari materia," and we are led to the conclusion that the advertising manager of the old American and English Encyclopedia of Law was right when he advertised that it was not so much to know what the law was as to where to find it.

Municipal ordinances, particularly in the large cities, have added to the volume of the law, and the great bulk of this legislation consists of restrictions upon the liberty of the individual.

It is not fair in discussing this question to call attention to freak statutes or ordinances. These, of course, are the exception and not the rule. It may be stated with confidence, however, that every man in this room, especially if he be a householder or the owner of an automobile and lives within the corporate limits of a city, would find upon examination that he violates every day some statutory or ordinance law wherein he has been commanded to do or not to do a certain thing. Such violations in some cases are not intentional but arise through ignorance of what the law is. If lawyers do not know what the law is, how can we indulge in the well known presumption that every man knows what the law is, and how can we apply the maxim that ignorance of the law excuses no man?

On the other hand, those who defend the existing state of our law admit that there is freak legislation, and admit that probably in some instances there is too much law, but point out the complexity of our civilization, the growth and development of our nation and its commercial and industrial interests, the vast increase of our urban population and the general need of legislation to meet modern requirements,

and insist that in nearly every instance if we open a statute at random we will find a useful and needful law.

Sir William Blackstone, in his famous definition, has said that Law is "a rule of action prescribed by the supreme power of the state, commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong."

The Supreme Court of Tennessee, in State vs. McCann, 72 Tenn. 9, has in view of our constitutional form of government in this country amended this definition so as to include the requirement that the rule of action prescribed must be in accordance with the Federal Constitution and with the Constitution of the State, if a State Statute.

In Duncan vs. Magette, 25 Texas, 245, it is said: "Law is a system of rules conformable to the standards of justice and on an enlarged view of the relations of persons as they practically exist. It is a mass of principles classified, reduced to order and put in the shape of rules, agreed on by ascertaining the common consent of mankind."

Samuel Johnson said that "the law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public." And Froude has expressed the thought that "our human laws are but the copy, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws, so far as we can read them." If these principles and rules were strictly followed there would be no reason or excuse for this discussion. But unfortunately these standards have not always been followed by our law-making bodies, because not all of our laws by any means follow the standards of justice, nor are they agreed upon by ascertaining the common consent of mankind, nor are they always the last result of human wisdom, nor even always imperfect copies of the eternal laws.

In defining good law and distinguishing it from bad law, the New York Court has made a definition which with certain modifications hereinafter referred to seems properly to define the subject. In Burke vs. State (119 N. Y. Supp. 1089-1099-64 Misc. Rep. 585) it is said that "Law accord

ing to an ancient maxim 'is good sense and what is contrary to good sense is not good law'."

The suggested modification of this definition is best illustrated by reference to an Illinois case upon an entirely different subject but where the language of the Court expresses by analogy the idea desired to be conveyed.

Lindsay vs. Lindsay (226 Ill. 319) was a divorce proceeding. The wife had been discovered in a suspicious and compromising situation with a man other than her husband. She claimed that there had been no impropriety in her actions but in anger and in pride, as she insisted, refused to make any explanation. Mr. Justice Cartwright, in commenting upon this phase of the case, said in the opinion:

"She had been imprudent in violating well recognized rules established by society for the conduct of married people. Every man and woman must understand that they are to be governed by such rules and to make their conduct conform to established standards of propriety. These standards are not made alone for the jealous and suspicious, nor those who are so blind and deaf that they can see no ground for suspicion but they do represent the deliberate judgment of the generality of the people as to what is proper and the natural inferences to be drawn from certain lines of conduct."

The analogy is apparent. Good law is good sense and what is good sense is to be determined by the deliberate judgment of the generality of the people, provided of course, that the result of the judgment exercised is in accord with the Federal Constitution if a national law, and the Federal and State Constitutions if a state law. It is not to be determined by half-baked or hasty judgment or opinion, but by deliberate judgment. It is not to be determined alone by what reformers think nor by the judgment of those who can see no good in any new measure. It is not to be determined by labor unions, by capital, by Chambers of Commerce, by manufacturers' associations, by farmers, by lawyers, by employers, by employes, by business men, by rich people or by poor people. In fact, this deliberate judgment

should not be the judgment of any class or so-called bloc, but it should be the deliberate judgment of the generality of the people as to what should be the law.

With the exercise of such judgment we would have fewer and simpler and better laws, and if we did not, we could have no just complaint, for in a free government like ours, when the people have registered their deliberate judgment that a law should be or should not be enacted, the question is settled until that deliberate judgment of the people shall be changed, and that change expressed in the well recognized methods of free, Republican government.

But it can be argued with a great degree of plausibility that the people, through their chosen representatives, have acted in the passage of these laws. The answer to this argument is that theoretically it is true, but that in many instances, as a practical proposition, it is false. Those who have served as members of legislative bodies know the truth of this statement and know how often an enacted law does not reflect the deliberate judgment of the majority of the people, but many times reflects the wishes and views of a small minority who, with noise and energy, convince our law-makers either that they represent the majority of the people, or that they represent a balance of power that may determine the result of an election.

The Primary Law is an example of this situation. Twenty-five years ago a serious condition had arisen in Illinois, as in other states, in relation to the nomination of party candidates for public office. Abuses had arisen under the old convention system. Chairmen of conventions had refused roll-calls, factional committees had seated delegates of their own choice upon the temporary rolls of conventions, thereby enabling in many cases such party committees to direct the organization of the convention and thereby direct its policies and nominations. Contests as to who were regular elected delegates in some instances were not settled according to principles of right and justice. Some times