fact, that may exist in the case against him, and to urge an acquittal whenever he can show that the case is not complete. To this extent, to quote the language of Mr. Charles Phillips, 'the counsel for the prisoner has no option; the moment he accepts his brief, every faculty he possesses becomes his client's property. It is an implied contract between him and the man who trusts him.' But further than this he can not rightfully go; it would be improper for him to endeavor to influence the jury, by urging upon them his own opinion, and it would be as well unprofessional as dishonest, if he were to do this when the opinion he expressed was not that which he held. In cases where only civil rights are involved, counsel has a right to take advantage of legal rules for the benefit of his client, even when in the particular case they seem to operate unjustly. Legal rules are established from reasons of general policy, and because they produce the best results in the great majority of cases, and injury in particular cases is inseparable from any rules of general order."

The idea which it is sought to convey from what has been said is, that a high moral standard of the bar should be maintained; that for the proper disposition of causes, both bench and bar are responsible; that the bench should give that careful thought and attention to every case which is so necessary for its correct determination; and that the duty of counsel is to aid the courts in administering the law, and assist in seeing justice done, according to the rules of law.

Fortunately, the subject of this address does not embrace questions which have found their way into the courts, to any considerable extent. Perhaps one reason for this is, that the education of the profession on these and kindred matters obviates the necessity for such a course; but, be that as it may, they are questions of such importance that they merit attention at the hands of those most interested; and with that end in view, this paper is submitted for your consideration.

ANNUAL ADDRESS

OF

JOHN F. PHILIPS,

JUDGE OF THE U. S. DISTRICT COURT
AT KANSAS CITY, MO.

Gentlemen of the Colorado Bar Association-To a man of ready resources and elegant leisure the invitation to address you would perhaps have come in ample time; but a judge in the midst of a term of court, beset with all manner of perplexing questions, ought to be entitled to a continuance on the ground of insufficient notice. Anxious, however, to express in some way my appreciation of the honor, as well as my admiration for the lawyers of this state, and knowing that the spirit of charity is quite inseparable from intellectual honesty, I accepted, with the distinct understanding between Brother Hugh Butler and myself that I must not be expected to discuss before you any abstract question of the science of law, or afflict you with a thesis, after the fashion of the academician.

Looking recently over the annual accounts of the outputs of the law schools and other educational institutions, and the census giving the number of lawyers and professional men in our country, the question came unbidden: What of lawyers in the future? Can they all flourish? If so, on what is the vast swarm to subsist and fatten?

The incubator is hard at work in the whole field of the learned professions. Medical colleges, dental and pharmaceutic schools each spring are graduating legions of "saw-bones," "tooth-carpenters" and "pestle pounders." To give all these successful occupation would seem to require the perpetual ravaging of epidemics, aches in every corner and crook of the human anatomy, and universal pain and decay.

And our theological seminaries, while not so thronged with eager expectants as the home and foreign missionary societies. fervently pray for, are yet keeping the professional incubator warm, commissioning an army of clerics, who before some of them have displayed their phylacteries will doubtless discover that they answered when some other fellow was called.

The commercial colleges are also in the race, yielding periodically immense crops of bookkeepers, typewriters and stenographers, until a business man who advertises for one feels compelled, at the expected onslaught, to increase his accident policy.

The publicist says the only relief for this plethoric condition is to lessen the product; while the pessimist says it will cure itself by "the survival of the fittest." But the political economist says a more sensible thing: that there is a law of trade and commerce regulating production and mitigating its excesses, and that is the law of supply and demand. Where the production is great its first effect is to incite sharp competition. In this rivalry energy is quickened, closer application to business is necessitated, and the wits are put on edge. The result is, following the law of gravity, that the slothful and dull-witted go down in the joust with brain, energy and courage. So through all the process, as the tide rolls on, commerce and trade expand with the multiplication of people, the wealth of the nation swells in volume, and colossal private fortunes accumulate.

This law of economics obtains in our profession. I would not quit graduating lawyers. Like an immense forest, the larger the supply of timber greater is the material from which to make selections for proper use. And what is better still: in the attrition of increased competition and rivalry, born of the mul tiplication of lawyers, comes a brighter, stronger class of lawyers. So while there is to-day less chance for the charlatan, the pretender and the ass, there is a broader field, a grander theatre for the real lawyer than was ever presented. The increase of good lawyers is not greater than the growth of population and wealth. As wealth and commerce expand, the demand for excellent lawyers is an ever developing quantity in the process of a higher civilization.

Our profession illustrates the truth of the Latin maxim: Tempore mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. Finch spoke truth when he said "The sparks of all the sciences are raked up from

the ashes of the law." Law belongs essentially to the sciences. And while like truth, a scientific principle never changes, its application enlarges to meet new conditions in government, political and social. What some alarmists denounce as the innovations of courts of law, and the aggressions and usurpations of courts of equity, are but evidences of the flexibility of the science of law, in its adaptability to new conditions and new occasions, in preventing a failure of justice and affording protection to society.

The old fashioned common law lawyer belongs to the Silurian epoch. Like a grandfather's clock, a useful and ornamental piece of furniture in its day, now set up in the corner covered with dyspeptic cobwebs-an interesting reminiscence-that never more strikes, he sits in his unswept office, wrapped in the solitude of his originality, in austere isolation, surrounded with a few venerable books, like Blackstone's Commentaries, Chitty's Pleadings, Ferne on Remainders, Coke's Littleton, Comyn's Digest, Gow on Partnerships, the first edition of Phillips on Evidence, and a law glossary. They are his regimentals of the revolution. He is almost sublime in his contempt for the innovations of modern commerce, science and law. He spurns even a cuspidor, as he uses his shirt bosom as a more democratic convenience. You will hear people say of this old fossil: "He is not an orator nor a 'hustler,' but he is a great common law lawyer." But what does he amount to in this day, clientless, ruminating over days gone by when, like a snail in its shell, he imagined the boundary walls of his legal vision circumscribed the whole universe? Commerce has come and added new continents of trade to the geography of the world, checkering the earth with railroads, exploring new seas, whitened with sheets of canvas catching every gale of prosperity. Electricity has come from the sky and girdled the earth with fire, harnessed for the indefinite multiplication of mechanical power. Civil engineering has tunneled through and leaped over the mountains; while the earth trembles with the onward march of civilization, its bowels groaning with the vexing forces of applied physics, to make it give up its hidden treasures for the enrichment of the human race. With all this material progress has come the imperious necessity for the development of law; the application and extension of old principles to new conditions, the introduction of new statutes and the establishment of new customs, calling for construction and assimilation.

The evolutions of civilization are marked in legal science. The man who was a successful practitioner thirty years ago, and then closed his office and went out into the mountains, "far removed from the madding crowd's ignoble strife," were he to return to the court house in Denver or Colorado Springs and hear a case on trial involving the flexible, adjustable principles of equity jurisprudence, to meet the exigencies springing out of commercial and corporation developments, and the complications arising from mammoth enterprises, he would be little less amazed and lost than was Rip Van Winkle when he descended from his mountain sleep to his native village. And if he had left Colorado twenty years ago, and in that period had not read a reported case, and on his return should step into a Denver court house and find on trial a mining case (such as Mr. Justice Brewer, now present, a few years ago fooled me, by his persuasive art, to undertake to try), involving original discovery of ore in place, the parallelism of end lines, the pursuit of the "dip," and continuity of vein, demanding a knowledge of chemistry, mineralogy, geology, surveying and photography-to say nothing of the marvelous advancement in expert testimony and the art of lying; and then should be told something about the more recent amplification of the rights of tunnel owners; or were to hear read one of Mr. T. A. Green's bills in equity against the owners of "The Little Johnny Lode," he would know that he would have to be born again before he could minister in the temple of justice.

The times have changed, and we are changed by them. The Ciceronian orator of the Forum is not so much in evidence as when some of us first hung our signs to the moaning winds, and, as we supposed, to the admiring gaze of passers-by. Then the opening day of Circuit Court was the imposing, spectacular assize of the county. The people came from the hills and lowlands and shops to hear the lawyers "plead," as they termed it. Then when the aspiring young lawyer arose to address court and jury he had for his audience the multitude; and from this impressible, mobile, hungry-eyed assemblage he gathered the inspiration of a vocabulary that swept like a cyclone all the law and facts of the case out of the court room. But visit my court room at Kansas City to-day; the mass of the people neither know nor care that court is in session. A case may be on trial involving a million in money or property. There will, perhaps,