it was at a time of a good deal of strain, and it seemed much easier to yield to his hospitable importunities than it was to resist them, because the event was far in the future. But as I approached the future and it became the present, it seemed to me that I got rather rattled at the idea of coming here. I contemplated having time to prepare a learned address about the life and work of some great legal luminary, or about tracing from the apex through the side lines into some other people's claim, or about irrigation, or something that would interest this illimitable West, but I could not get time to prepare anything of that kind; and while I was meditating this learned essay I found a little encouragement in a communication that I received from the Bar Association of Buffalo, saying they had had an oration read to them on the life of Chief Justice Jay by a celebrated national orator last year and they had decided to abandon orations hereafter, but that if I would come they would let me talk in the hope of getting something different. It seems to me on these solemn occasions when members of the profession get together, always wishing the speakers of the evening would get through so that they might assemble themselves in pharmacy or elsewhere, according to the laws of the State, that the orator is a good deal like the orchestra in a theater-very much missed if it is not there, but no one pays any particular attention to it.

Then, too, I was turning over in my mind the question of what I should call it. Was it to be a discourse? Was it to be an address? Or, being near the Fourth, should it be an oration? Then there came to me an inspiration. I allowed it might be called a sermon, because I remembered a little story that came from the backbone of these United States, New England. You know there is always in a New England town some simple-minded gentleman, not much given to labor, one who would rather be following the horses and working in a ring at the county fair than anything else in the world; and there was one such in the town I have in mind who was pretty shrewd at it. Old John used to go to church about twice a year. He got into church one day, more by accident than anything else, and it happened that the parson had turned his barrel over that week and struck the sermon he

always preached once a year on the evils of gambling and horseracing. After he had finished preaching and the meeting was over he approached John and said: "Well, John, I am glad to see you at church." "Thank you, Parson," said John. "John," said the Parson, "you have not been here lately." "No," said John, "it is nigh on to two years now since I have been here." "Well," said the parson, "if I had known you were going to be here I would not have preached that sermon." "Well, never mind, Parson," said John, "it must be a damn bad sermon that won't hit me somewhere." So it seemed to me that talking, as I said, to Easterners living in the West, perhaps a sermon that would “hit” those fellows in the East might perhaps "hit" them in the West.

Now, as I have thought over the situation, as I have grown older and have been brought more in contact with public life and with large affairs, the thing which has perhaps impressed me most is the great difference between the conditions under which we are calied upon to-day to operate democratic institutions based on universal suffrage and those under which these institutions were developed. I am not a pessimist; I am afraid I am too optimistic. But I think I see, and see truly, in the present condition of affairs conditions that give every one who thinks grave anxiety and that imposes responsibilities upon us especially who are members of a learned profession, who are of a profession having great traditions, and we have got to meet those responsibilities and meet them now. If there was any single fundamental thought that underlay the struggle for constitutional liberty, that was potent in the development of what we of the Anglo-Saxon race speak of as our liberties, it was the idea that there should be no taxation without representation. When you study it, you see all through the struggles during the long reigns of the Stuarts how that principle was involved; you see it as the principal motive in bringing about the War of the Revolution, which established our national life; and yet how do you think the fathers of constitutional liberties would have treated the idea that the taxes should be levied by the representives of those who have no property and expended by those who have less? It seems to me that we do not quite realize where we

have landed as a result of the violation of that principle. We have universal manhood suffrage, and I believe in Colorado here you have universal womanhood suffrage, too. I do not know how it works. I know that a little cousin of mine, who was a teacher for many years in Denver, asked me who I voted for in the election when Bryan, Palmer and McKinley ran against one another. She said, "Travers, did you vote for McKinley?" "No," I said, "like David B. Hill, 'I am a Democrat.'" "Well, did you vote for Mr. Bryan ?" "No, I did not vote for Mr. Bryan." "Then you didn't vote at all?" "Oh, yes," I said, "I voted." "Who did you vote for?" I said, "I voted for Palmer and Buckner." "Why," she said, "I never heard of them." If this is a fair type of female suffrage, I should suppose the results would be at least striking.

But now consider this idea-we have in the East there-we have in the City of New York--a budget of a hundred millions of dollars a year in that one city, which is larger than not a few national budgets. I do not suppose that ninety per cent. of the voters in the City of New York pay any taxes. No wonder expenditures are lavish. It is not at all surprising; it does not take a great deal of self-denial to "blow in" another fellow's money. You can do it with great complacency. And the wasteful and corrupt expenditure of public moneys that we find all over the United States to-day is really traceable in a large measure to that one thing, it seems to me; the violation of that which was a fundamental principle, that there should be no taxation without representation; but the representation should be the representation of all the persons taxed. Why, as one of the most perfect illustrations, which sums up our situation in the East, in the concrete, as nothing else I know of, I want to tell you of an incident that occurred in the City of New York on this very line of wasteful and dishonest expenditure of public money. There was a gentleman who was chief chemist of the Board of Health in the City of New York and is now Health Commissioner-an honorable, noble man, none finer in this country. He had no power of determining what sums should be expended for particular articles or what the price

should be. His functions were limited to putting in a request, and, when the bill was returned, to "O.K.'ing" it as to quantity and quality but not as to price. It was of course put through one of those ordinary railroad construction supply companies or something of that kind in the City of New York, that supply everything from a needle to an anchor, and he had made a requisition for five pounds of sponges. It came in on the requisition, "five pounds of sponges." He was a conscientious fellow and he always took these different articles that came in, went through them himself and had them called out and checked by his clerk. He said, "John, where are those sponges ?" John produced a lot of sponges and said, "Here they are, Doctor." He said, "There's no five pounds of sponges there; put them on the scales." They put them on the scales and they weighed just four ounces. A day or two afterward around came the agent of the railroad construction supply company. "Hello, Doc.," he said, "have you O. K.'d our bill?" "No," said the doctor, "you have either got to strike these sponges out or make good." "What's the matter with the sponges ?" "Why," said he, "you have charged for five pounds while there is only four ounces." Pardon the language, but it is characteristic of the type of the individual "Hell, Doctor," said the agent, "did you weigh them dry?"

Well, it doesn't take long for a hundred millions to run out at that rate.

And then, too, I don't know, I may be getting old-fashioned. I find myself described in the Rocky Mountain News as a middleaged man; I always supposed I was a kid just out of college. But I got bred into me some old-fashioned notions about the sanctity of private property, and when you get this power of taxation exercised by an electorate that may in the stress of economic conditions or an industrial crisis go anywhere, you are putting into the hands of men a terrible power. There is a growth in this country of socialistic ideas. We do not always call them socialistic ideas. I have no doubt it might jar you to think of calling socialistic the notion of taxing old maids and bachelors for the education of the children of others, but it is approximating very closely to it. It is very nice

for us who have children and no property. But you have given into the hands of this great electorate and you can not take it away from them—an electorate which in the East is very different from that which it is here in the West-this power of impairing the rights of private property. It is an instrument that the socialists have always aimed at. It is an instrument of destruction, and we as lawyers are called upon to meet that situation. We have been taught and led to believe in the sanctity of private property, or at least we have been taught to believe in making other people believe in it, and we have been taught that equality is equity. But one of the fundamental principles of private property was its capacity to be inherited without a destructive tax, and yet we see the notion continually creeping up in the various populistic and socialistic and communistic ideas of the time of practically destroying this element of private property, and on the question of equality being equity we are continually having suggested to us something in the line of a graduated income tax. It may be true, and it is true without doubt, that those who are strongest should perhaps bear the burden of taxation-the burdens of the community-but it does jar you a little bit when an industry like the steel trust has to be protected at the expense of the community.

Your chairman, the President of the Association, has spoken about the municipal problem, which is another one of the conditions entirely different from those under which democratic institutions based upon universal suffrage were developed in this country. We had practically nothing but a rural life, now we are fast coming to almost the condition where we have nothing but urban life. The growth of cities is something that is hardly realized by those who have not studied it. In the State of New York to-day more than three-fourths of the population are gathered in three or four great cities, and nearly half the population of that great State is gathered in one city. Under such conditions as we live in we must have party government. There is no other way of working our institutions than by party government. But party government in the East, with the great stress and strain of political activity that exists there, has resulted in organization down to minute