shall be changed, but that the judge shall be rejected or the courts abolished.

We can go far, and we must go far, to curb this growing tendency to unreasoning condemnation, for if it is to become the rule, it means the administration of the law through frightened judges and at the behest of him who can cry the loudest; and it means ultimately the loss of any sane forum to which an appeal for justice can safely be made. It is our duty as lawyers to insist, in season and out, that the function of the judge is not to make but to declare the law, that only by declaring it impersonally can there be any personal protection for any one, and that only by protecting the courts and their judges against lawless attack can the citizeneven he who criticises most vehemently-be vouchsafed the guaranties of the constitution. When there arises a question of local importance and it is decided by the courts, only to be followed by public condemnation from those who had already condemned the winning side, in advance, can we not stand more effectively against such clamor; and above all, can we not stand more effectively, both as individual lawyers, and as a body, against any attempt to condemn, made prior to decision, and for the obvious purpose of directing the decision itself?

It is, perhaps, not so much to be wondered at that many laymen feel themselves vested with the right personally to overrule the decisions of all courts, and by easy stages to condemn the courts. It is but human that each man should rely upon his own judgment; and it is largely human that, without considering the ultimate outcome of his own unreasoned impressions, each man should permit those impressions to constitute his judgment. But because of this human side of things, we should be more insistent in carrying into our personal and professional lives the truth that we know to exist, and in urging the thought that, from every standpoint, the destruction of the independence of the bench would

mean nothing but loss; for a judge frightened by temporary and partisan clamor would be the worst possession of popular govern

ment.

Men on the bench are but human. They are sworn to obey the law and to enforce it. They must determine the cases submitted to them, whether they care to or not, and they must announce their conclusions regardless of criticism; and some one must lose. If they falter for fear of criticism, they are cowards. If they are faithless to their trust, there are methods of removal; and yet with the thousands of judges who have administered the law in this country, there have been so few impeachments and removals that the proportion is negligible. In no branch of human activity does our history show a higher integrity than has existed and now exists upon the bench.

As men, we know that the men who accept the burden of declaring the law are entitled to the protection of men against unwarranted criticism which they are not in position to resent. As citizens, we know that they are entitled to the protection of citizens working for the common good; and, as lawyers, we know that unless we uphold and protect them in the fearless and impartial declaration of the rules of action upon which society depends, there can be no rules of action. But, in the press of our individual professional labors, how far do we go in urging these truths upon our clients, or upon the public in general?

Our study of the law and of the basis of our form of government, has not only given us the right to speak, but it has also imposed upon us the obligation to speak. The very fact that we say to the public that we believe we are prepared to select and to recommend candidates for judicial honors, carries with it the duty on our part to defend the man on the bench, and to defend him for the protection of the public itself.

No man has ever properly accused the Bar of any cowardice in the assertion of the rights of an individual litigant. To the last court and to the last hearing in the last court, the Bar stands

for the assertion of such rights, against all odds. But our silence in the defense of the judge is often misconstrued into sympathy with the condemnation, whether this condemnation come from the public press or from some less potent source.

Nothing is more important to the maintenance of free institutions, than is the liberty of the public press, but it is no greater and no less than the liberty of any citizen. Its utterances are, after all, the utterances of men, and when, as at times occurs, some newspaper man seemingly proceeds upon the theory that his power and right to try and to dispose of litigated cases is as great as that committed to the courts, the duty of the Bar is a definite one to resent the assumption, and to preach the doctrine of an impartial and impersonal administration of the law through courts unsullied, and by judges protected against the terror of any power save that of the law itself.

If it be said that no lawyer cares to rush into public controversy when his client's cause has been criticised, or when a judge has been subjected to unwarranted attack, or to a malicious insinuation as to his motives or integrity, this is but a partial answer. The aid we can give and should give in the construction of a sound public opinion would go far in the matter; and let us not forget that, in all fairness, it is the supreme duty of a lawyer whose client's cause has been advanced by public comment. to resent that comment as an embarrassment to the functions of the courts and to the impartial dispensation of justice according to the law, and to resent it at least as fully as though the comment were adverse to his client's interest.

The world has always known the conflict between law and lawlessness, and in this we lawyers stand on no debatable ground. As individuals, we may differ on the economic policies of strong government or weak government, on centralization or de-centralization, on laissez-faire and laissez aller, and on the many social and industrial questions with which the present age is struggling.

These things are but the avenues of approach to some definite government. They imply the necessity for the existence of a definite government; and it is of this underlying idea that the Bar is itself a part.

If, then, we as lawyers submit at times, without protest, to unjust attacks upon the courts, and upon the constituted methods of maintaining some form of government, need we express surprise at a growing popular tendency to criticise all government?

There is no constitutional right to preach anarchy, and yet the past ten years have seen an appalling development of the practice. Night after night the soap-box orator plays upon ignorance and upon disappointment, and with one purpose—a revulsion of the existing order of things. Some immediate condition is customarily made the pretext for the argument, but the argument itself needs no immediate condition for its basis; it is the old-time attack upon all governmental conditions. No one can listen to these harangues without being impressed with the fact that they come in considerable measure from unnaturalized foreigners and that they go in large measure to unnaturalized foreigners to the very class from which our future citizenship is to be in a measure recruited.

It is not surprising that an ignorant man, leaving what he conceives to be the oppression of an arbitrary and autocratic government, and coming to what he is told is a land of freedom, should be misled to the belief that freedom is personal license and that liberty is distinct from and has supplanted the law. It is unnecessary to discuss the inherent dangers in this situation, and it is unnecessary to consider the lethargy, the cowardice, or the ignorance of constitutional rights and obligations, that causes municipal authorities to stand by while they permit the foundations of government to be assailed under the guise of a guaranteed freedom of speech. No student of history fails to appreciate the fact that the sowing of this sort of wind means the reaping of a whirlwind. No well-grounded lawyer fails to realize that the general

preaching of anarchy is in its very nature treason to all government, and that its first result is disorder and its last result violence. But the process has been going on with little to counteract it, and with little opportunity for an ignorant alien to learn the things that form our constitutional liberty, and make it liberty at all, but with every opportunity for him to have his mind poisoned.

As a result, instances have occurred where witnesses have gone upon the stand and admitted, almost with pride, that while they avail themselves of the protection of our laws, and live within our midst, they are not and do not propose to become citizens, because they are opposed to our form of government. To the extent that this and the violence that it may produce are the result of lack of knowledge, the profession can be of avail in the cure. We have done little to see that the adult foreigner who casts his lot among us is given an opportunity to learn, prior to naturalization, that he is or may become a vital part of the government itself, and that there is and must be a sanctioned rule of action for the preservation of his own rights. What higher work could a lawyer undertake than that of giving opportunity to learn that anarchy is not the rule of liberty? What more practical service could be offered than to teach the alien the essentials of our history and of our geography and of our law, so that against the assaults, he could stand firm in the knowledge that the law is his protection and not his enemy; that this is not a land of lawlessness; that his own future depends upon his own participation in the enforcement of the law, and that thus and thus only may he say, "Though I am alone, yet I am not afraid."

We do not hope for the time when we will have to debate the fundamentals upon the street corners, and with some professed anarchist or militant socialist who while claiming the protection of the constitution seeks to overturn it. Would it not be wise to aid in the postponement of that day by urging our law schools, as part of the training of lawyers, to arrange some plan