5I6

THE GREEN BAG

Compare a volume of the Reports of the current year with a volume of forty years ago of the same court, and the comparison shows the increasing complexity of our everyday life. Compare the goth volume of Massachusetts Reports (8 Allen), 1865, with the 187th volume of Massachusetts Reports, 1905. The new subjects of litigation not found in the earlier Report are : Automobiles, Bankruptcy, Parks and Parkways, Boxing Matches, The Civil Service Law, Dynamite, Elevators, Elevated Railways, Employers' Liability Act, Grade Crossing Acts, Liability Insurance, Water Rates, Obligations Redeemable in Numerical Order, and The Negotiable Instruments Act. Each of these subjects is prolific in liti gation. The law is never at rest. It is in constant development. It is interesting to note in the earlier Re port that a corporation is plaintiff in fifteen cases, and is defendant in an equal number; while in the latter volume a corporation is plaintiff in only ten cases and is defendant in sixty-four cases. Surely corporations have a legitimate page in their accounts for Legal expenses. The law is a science, and in the pictu resque words of Lord Nottingham, the Cicero of the English Bar: "The sparks of all sciences in the world are taken up in the ashes of the law." Magnificent as are the praises of the law, the law by itself is like a beautiful statue, whose exquisite propor tions excite unbounded admiration; but the marble is cold and lifeless. It is a work of ornament and delight, but it is only beauti ful. Law as law, is theoretical and Utopian. But it is the administration of law with which the lawyer is most concerned. To

Cromwell the law was " a tortuous and ungodly jungle," but to the lawyer the whole body of the law is the considered wisdom of all time. To him its history, its development, its learning, its adap tation to all the mutations of time and chance are a source of ever-increasing ad miration. He looks upon the law as the handmaid of Justice, in whose temple he is a minister. It is a living force. It is the preservative power in civilization. The lawyer has a pride in his profession. The great men whose names are inscribed on its rolls are to him the real heroes of history. All knowledge is the province of the law yer. This versatility was admirably illus trated in the argument of the telephone cases. On the way to the Capitol on the day of the argument, a scientist walking with Chief Justice Waite, said to him: "I don't see how any tribunal of judges can understand the scientific questions involved in the case." After hearing the argument of the late Mr. Storrow, he said: "Now I don't see how the Court can fail to under stand the scientific questions involved." So clearly had the lawyer with trained accuracy stated the matters in controversy. We are glad to remember that D. Appleton White and John Pickering, two Massa chusetts lawyers, — one a Judge of Probate, the other City Solicitor of Boston — pre pared an edition of Sallust for publication a hundred years ago. It was the first classic, not a mere reprint, published in the United States. The lawyer as a part of the court is a part of the government and interested in its pros perity. We are a great people, and notwith standing the hysterical complaints that find vent in the daily and periodical press, a wellgoverned people. Well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed, with an open school-house and a free altar, on this earth there is no nation where the skies are bluer and the grass greener, the people more contented or with a brighter future than in the United States of America in this very year of grace. All