442

THE GREEN BAG

of the peace and to keep the dissatisfied from violent manifestation against the govern ment and our present social system. There are, however, abundant evidences that the prosecution of criminals has not been certain and thorough to the point of preventing popular protest. The existence of lynching in many parts of the country is directly traceable to this lack of uniformity and thoroughness in the enforcement of our criminal laws. This is a defect which must be remedied or it will ultimately destroy the republic. I shall not delay you this morning, how ever, with a discussion as to the reforms which ought to be adopted in the criminal branch of our jurisprudence. I have attempted this in an address on another occasion. I wish to confine myself to the delays and inequalities in the administration of justice in controversies between private persons, including, of course, corporations. The present is a time when all our institu tions are being subjected to close scrutiny with a view to the determination whether we have not now tried the institutions upon which modern society rests to the point of proving that some of them should be radically changed. The chief attack is on the institution of private property and is based upon the inequalities in the distribu tion of wealth and of human happiness that are apparent in our present system. As I have had occasion in other places to say frequently, I believe that among human institutions that of private property, next to personal liberty, has had most to do with the uplifting and the physical and moral improvement of the whole human race, but that it is not inconsistent with the rights of private property to impose limitations upon its uses for unlawful purposes, and that this is the remedy for reform rather than the abolition of the institution itself. But this scrutiny of our institutions, this increasing disposition to try experiments, to see whether there is not seme method by which human happiness may be more equally dis

tributed than it is, ought to make those of us who really believe in our institutions as essential to further progress anxious to remove real and just grounds for criticism in our present system. I venture to think that one evil which has not attracted the attention of the com munity at large, but which is likely to grow in importance, as the inequality be tween the poor and the rich in our civili zation is studied, is in the delays in the ad ministration of justice between individuals. As between two wealthy corporations, or two wealthy individual litigants, where the subject-matter of the litigation reaches to tens and hundreds of thousands of dol lars, where each party litigant is able to pay the expenses of litigation, large fees to counsel, and to undergo for the time being the loss of interest on the capital involved, our present system, while not perfect, is not so far from proper results as to call for anxiety. The judges of the country, both state and national, are good men. Venal ity in our judges is very rare; and while the standard of judicial ability may not always be as high as we should like to see it, the provisions for review and for free and impartial hearing are such as generally to give just final judgments. The inequal ity that exists in our present administra tion of justice, and that sooner or later is certain to rise and trouble us, and to call for popular condemnation and reform, is in the unequal burden which the delays and expenses of litigation under our system impose on the poor litigant. In some com munities, I know, delays in litigation have induced merchants and commercial men to avoid courts altogether and to settle their controversies, by arbitration, and to this extent the courts have been relieved; but such boards of arbitration are only possible as between those litigants that are members of the same commercial body, and are in a sense associates. They offer no relief to the litigant of little means who finds himself engaged in a controversy with a wealthy