REPORT OF DELEGATE TO AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION.

To the State Bar Assocation:

The duties of President of this association are honorable, onerous, and multiform, and whoso performs them with zeal and fidelity earns and receives from its members the fullest meed of praise. He must preside at all the meetings of this association, whose members are contentious by calling and habit (and Tennesseans, besides); must appoint all committees, assign duties to Central Council, open the annual meeting of the association with a learned address, and for a whole year feel the special burden of so deporting himself as by his very walk and conversation "to foster legal science, maintain the honor and dignity of the profession of law, and cultivate professional ethics and social intercourse among its members."

To accomplish all this has severely taxed the talents and filled the measure of ambition of former presidents. Not so our present chief magistrate! The versatilities of his genius have not found sufficient employment in the usual round of official duties, but, ever bearing aloft his "banner with the strange device, Excelsior," he has nobly pressed forward to the attainment of the full stature of the ideal President of the Bar Association of the State of Tennessee. He took up a course of reading and perused with delight the proceedings of this association for the year 1897, learning therefrom that there was an American Bar Association which received delegates annually from this association; and that there was a section of the American Association devoted to legal education, to which also delegates were sent; and he said to himself: "Go to now; why shall not these delegates be required by the President to report to this association at its next meeting, and thus add to the length of the programme? There is no reason. I will order it done." It was in vain that the delegates to the educational section represented that the constitution and by-laws of the American Bar Association made no provision for delegates to that section; that they were chosen only upon a special invitation for last year, and in

vited merely to see and to hear what was said and done; that they were charged with no mission from this association, and could have, therefore, nothing to report. The President was insatiable. "This is a mere pretext," he said, "to escape performance of duty. Let them report without fail."

The delegates then replied that, much to their regret, they were unable to attend the meeting, and, for that reason also, which, to their minds was as satisfactory and sufficient as the first, they could make no report to the President or the association, and, therefore, begged to be excused, but the President, always stern and severe, became now relentless and obdurate, and to the protesting inquiry, "What could a delegate with no duties to discharge and no mission to perform report of a meeting which he had not attended," the answer quickly came: "Somethinganything no matter what; it will edify the President, who wishes to know something about this American Bar Association, and may add interest to his programme; prepare and present the report, and herein fail not under legal penalty."

The founders of the Tennessee Bar Association, thoroughly versed in the history of the Anglo-Saxon struggle for liberty, filled with American dread of despotic power, and animated by the spirit of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, looking down the corridors of time, had, no doubt, seen the phantom figure of the man on horseback, domineering the commons of this association, and so they resolved, by wise constitutional limitation, to curb the consuming ambition of any future president who, in some hapless year, might be chosen by drowsy members to the first place of power, and to protect the membership from a reign of terror. Accordingly, it was given to the Central Council to select the time and place of our meetings and to make such regulations as should be necessary for the proper conduct of its affairs, and, especially, to present business, including programmes, for the association.

But the wisdom of the fathers proved wholly inadequate. There are men against whose imperious will and vaulting ambition laws form no barrier. Greece had her Philip, Rome her

Caesar, France her Napoleon, and it is easy to understand how the yielding minds and pacific dispositions of the Central Council have bent to the imperious spirit of the chief magistrate, and suffered the membership to be forced into most absurd and unprecedented performances, so that nothing was left to them but abject submission, and this delegate was reduced to the hard dilemma of reporting what he had done and seen and heard at a meeting which he did not attend, or of incurring the presidential displeasure of Charles I., and its direful consequences. Less than three centuries ago our English ancestors chose to undergo peine forte et dure rather than plead not guilty to an indictment for felony; but the martyr's crown is not so glittering in these days, and this non-attending delegate to the legal education section of the American Bar Association, therefore, begs leave, most respectfully, to submit the following report to the Bar Association of Tennessee:

The American Bar Association, now twenty years old, and composed of about fifteen hundred regular members, lawyers of more than five years good standing at the bars of the several States, is organized "to advance the science of jurisprudence, promote the administration of justice and uniformity of legislation throughout the Union, uphold the honor of the profession of the law, and encourage cordial intercourse among the members of the American bar." It once had a rival in the National Bar Association, which, having served its purpose, welcomed euthanasia; and now this sole survivor may be justly regarded as the organ and exponent of the best thought, highest culture, and most honorable ambition of the American bar. Among its honored presidents may be named Edward J. Phelps, of Ver mont; Alexander R. Lawton, of Georgia; Thomas J. Semmes. of Louisiana; David Dudley Field, of New York; Simeon E. Baldwin, of Connecticut; J. Randolph Tucker, of Virginia, and Thomas M. Cooley, of Michigan. The regular membership is distributed over all the States and territories of the Union, numbering from one in Idaho, to one hundred and fifty in New York, the Tennessee bar contributing twenty-three, and each

as

State Association may appoint annually three delegates, who have gratis all the privileges of membership at and during the meeting. The association meets annually at such time and place the committee may select, but by custom, its meetings occur always in the month of August, in the even years, at Saratoga, and in odd years at such other convenient places as the committee may choose. Last year one hundred and eighty-four members were present at the meeting at Cleveland, Ohio, when Mr. William Wirt Howe was chosen President, and will preside at the meeting this year at Saratoga Springs, on the 17th, 18th, and 19th of August. Besides the President's address, interesting papers, reports from standing and special committees, and the banquet (never to be forgotten), the leading feature of the meeting is the annual address, to be delivered this year by Joseph H. Choate, of New York. Last year the association heard Governor Griggs, of New Jersey, now Attorney-General, on "Law Making," and in 1896, the association and its guests sat upon the field of the cloth of gold, and listened with rapt attention to the annual address upon "International Arbitration," delivered by "Russeil, of Killowen," Lord Chief Justice of England.

At these meetings one will usually see James C. Carter, Leonard A. Jones, Simeon E. Baldwin, Seymour D. Thompson, William Wirt Henry, Moorfield Story, Henry Hitchcock, Judson Harmon, Jolin D. Lawson, and other lawyers and authors of national reputation.

As illustrating the spirit of the members of this association, a motion to appoint a committee on transportation, with a view of obtaining the usual reduction of fare to persons attending conventions, was, on motion from New York, seconded by Tennessee, laid on the table for the reason that "it would not be dignified for the association to ask favors from railroads."

There is also one Vice President from each State; a General Council, consisting of one member from each State; a Local Council in each State, consisting of the Vice President and not less than two members from such State. Tennessee is this year

represented on the General Council by Mr. George N. Tillman, of Nashville; on the Local Council, by Bradford, Dickinson, and A. M. Tillman, of Nashville, while the honors of Vice President are worthily worn by our whilom veteran Secretary, Judge J. W. Bonner, of Nashville. So much for the constitution, purposes, and personnel of the American Bar Association, and now for its section of legal education.

This section, which meets at three o'clock on each afternoon, is composed of all members of the association who desire to be enrolled as members of the section, and has its own chairman and secretary, elected annually by its members. Persons not eligible for membership in the association, but who are engaged in teaching law, are, by courtesy, admitted to the privilege of the floor. The object of the section is the discussion of methods of legal education and the improvement thereof by recommendations to the association, which proceeds so carefully, however, as not to consider the recommendations until they have been referred to its general committee on legal education.

In attendance upon the meetings of this section will usually be found Judge Baldwin, of Yale; Chancellors McClain, of Iowa, and Rogers, of Chicago; Professors Sharp, of Baltimore; Carson, of Philadelphia, and Wambaugh, of Harvard, and many other gentlemen either engaged or interested in this subject of prime importance to the American bar, and especially to the bar of Tennessee.

The growth in modern methods of legal education is well illustrated in the table of statistics published in last year's proceedings, which shows that while, in 1890, the number of students at law schools in the United States was 3,517, in 1896, it was 9,607, an increase of 175 per cent. in six years. In the Southern States, Virginia leads, with an attendance upon her three law schools of 214. Tennessee is second, with 199 students at her six schools. In 1896-7, the attendance at these was as follows: