it is undesirable to cheapen those recommendations. The only way not to do this is to confine those recommendations to matters where it would have some force and some effect, and certainly the recommendation of a small majority would not have this effect. It would simply be an expression of opinion. I will therefore offer the following resolution:

"Resolved, That this association has heard with much interest and profit the able discussion as to the advisability of repealing the "Dumb Act of 1850," and deems it unnecessary to express its opinion on the question."

The resolution was adopted.

Mr. Burton Smith: I move that the reports received on yesterday and the day before be passed for discussion until the next meeting.

Seconded and adopted.

The Secretary: There is one paper to which I wish to call attention. Our program contained the statement that Major J. C. C. Black, of Augusta, would address the association on the subject of "Law and Lawyers." Major Black has been unable to attend, being confined to his bed by a serious illness, but he has sent his paper to the association and I think it is but right that we should take some notice of it. It has been the custom heretofore for these papers, where the authors were not present, to be published in the proceedings, and I would suggest that this paper take that course.

Mr. Lawton: I think any one of us who has had the pleasure not only of reading anything that Major Black may write, but of hearing him speak, would earnestly desire to hear Major Black, I move that we earnestly request Major Black to deliver that paper at our next meeting, and that in the meantime it be not published. Seconded and adopted

A recess of ten minutes was had.

The President: We have almost reached the end of what has been a delightful and successful session of the

Georgia Bar Association, but it would end in failure if we did not not hear from our father in the law, Chief Justice Bleckley.

Judge Bleckley delivered an address, giving as his subject “Human Seniority." (See Appendix Q.)

The President: What is the pleasure of the association?

Mr. Terrill: I move that we adjourn sine die.

Seconded and carried, and the association stood adjourned.

APPENDIX A.

A CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN LAW.

THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS, BY

JOSEPH R. LAMAR,

BEFORE THE SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL SESSION OF THE GEORGIA BAR ASSOCIATION, AT WARM SPRINGS, GA., JULY 4, 1900.

Gentlemen of the Georgia Bar Association:

July 4th, 1900! a Nation's birthday! a Century's close! a date that compels a look backwards, and challenges a comparison of the end with the beginning of the century. Between A. D.

1800, and A. D. 1900, humanity made its greatest material progress from tallow candle to arc light; from stage-coach to vestibule train; from sailing vessel to ocean greyhound; from spinning-wheel to cotton factory; from forge to blast furnace; from flint lock to Gatling gun-each a marvel, and in each a revolution. But, so sated with wonders are we, that the mind refuses to be amazed at what has been done, at what is being done, or at the prophecies of what will be done. It refuses to listen to the oft-repeated story of progress.

If this be true as to those achievements which appeal to the eye-if even the spectacular and dazzling have lost their power to amaze, it is inevitable that any advance in the quiet and unobtrusive departments of life should be ignored, if not actually denied. When everything else rushes so fast, how natural to say that the law has stood still. And, in truth, the profession is a stern judge of its own shortcomings; upon many occasions, notably at the first meeting of this Association, it was charged that the law had not only not kept pace with the march of events but had actually lost ground. Still, without shutting our

ears to many severe and just criticisms, and frankly admitting that there is great room for improvement, we may yet confidently claim that the law has made great, though not conspicuous or striking, advances. With all confidence we may challenge comparison of what it is to-day with what it was one hundred years ago.

Let me disarm your criticism. A statement of the changes wrought within the century has in it nothing original. Necessarily, it must point to those things with which you are familiar—so familiar indeed that you do not realize how strange they are—and therefore merely to name the reforms and tell how recently they have been adopted will not impress upon you how great they really are. We must devise some plan, even if it be not novel, to quicken our imagination. We must, for a moment, change our point of view.

But first, in order to make any comparison, we must have in our mind's eye a picture of the state of the law at the beginning of this century; and that picture is hard to find, for in the year 1800 we had practically no American law; the Supreme Court of the United States had met term after term, and adjourned without rendering a single decision; all of its rulings prior to 1800 are printed in less than 400 pages. There was no Story, There had been no

no Marshall, no American Jurisprudence. great questions before the court. There were a few distinguished politicians, whose biography, as such, has kept alive something of their names as lawyers, but, we have, in published volume, few pictures of the then American lawyer or of the American court. What glimpses we do get show that English methods and English jurisprudence had been transplanted to these shores, and were still here flourishing, so that, in making our comparison between what it is now and what it was then, we must contrast American law of 1900 with English law of 1800.

You have all heard of "Letters from Hell." It may not be improper for a prosaic lawyer to follow the suggestion of that author, and do again what has been done before, and, without

saying whether he comes from below or descends from above, let us imagine that able, arbitrary and insolent Chief Justice of England, Lord Kenyon, who had presided in 1800, called from his long home, and taking his seat on the bench of the superior court of this county, and allowed by courtesy to preside for a term in this year of grace, 1900. Let us put ourselves in his place; see things with his old-fashioned eyes; hear with his oldtime ears. He will dislike the simplicity of our procedure; our democratic ways will shock him; he will miss the stuff gown and his horse-hair wig, and, if the measure of his astonishment is any indication of the progress we have made, we can congratulate ourselves, as he constantly stares at the things we take as a matter of course, but which are new, startlingly new, to him.

His first case is one where the sheriff has levied on a married woman's property to pay her husband's debts, and she rushes into court and protests. The old judge is astounded to see her there at all, and when he is cited to the new law which shows that her husband has now no right to her property; that she is actually allowed to make contracts; that she can sue and be sued, and even, in rare instances, be made to pay her own debts, he can hardly credit the evidences of his senses. And as if this was not startling enough, as the case progresses he is still more dumbfounded to learn that by the act of 1868 he is required to allow "the parties to testify each in his own behalf," and strange as it may seem, that perjury is now no more prevalent than it was before this extraordinary change of the law. He will try to get back on familiar ground and say: "Well, Mr. Sheriff, if this man's wife's property cannot be taken to pay his debts, and if he has none of his own to satisfy the execution, why is he allowed to be at large? Why is he not in jail? But if the sheriff is a young man, he hardly knows what the judge is referring to. He does not himself know that it is only since the Constitution of 1868 that imprisonment for debt has been abolished, and that as late as 1810 twelve hundred men were in jail in New York City for debts less than twenty-five dollars. So far from