But while He has ac

gage in discourteous or inconsiderate speech toward the court, opposing counsel or the witnesses on the other side. this is true, he enjoys the confidence of his client. cepted his cause, and owes to him the utmost fidelity. All of his industry, his learning, his logic, his eloquence, his coolness and nerve in battle, and it may be added, all the influence and power that a lofty character and a gentlemanly demeanor entitle him to exert upon the court and jury, he is under contract to employ in the service of his client. He is the sacred and the secret repository of his client's affairs of a legal nature, often of his most important concerns, and his bearing toward his client ought to be of such a nature as to insure and secure his respect and confidence in a relation terminable only by death.

Wolsey's prayer on the accession of Sir Thomas More, may be not irreverently breathed over the truly useful lawyer:

For truth's sake, and his conscience; that his bones
When he has run his course, and sleeps in blessings,
May have a tomb or orphan's tears wept on him."

What has been above stated is to be understood and accepted as an expression of my own personal views, for which the other members of the committee are in no wise responsible, no other member of the committee being present, and your chairman having had no opportunity to submit this report to their inspection. or to receive their suggestions or criticisms thereon.

Respectfully submmited,

HOWARD VAN EPPS,
Chairman.

[Note.-Those who desire to pursue this subject further would do well to read Judge Sharwood's little book on Legal Ethics, to which I have several times alluded in this report. It would be well if that work were made a text-book in Law Schools, and elsewhere, where young gentlemen are being fitted for the Bar.]

APPENDIX E.

DELAYS AND TECHNICALITIES IN THE ADMINIS TRATION OF JUSTICE.

PAPER BY REUBEN R. ARNOLD, OF ATLANTA.

No system by which government metes out justice through the agency of courts has ever been found perfect. Neither the wisdom of the ancients nor that of the present wonderful age has been able to devise any plan by which the attempt to administer justice, according to law, can in every case be done without delay or hardship. Necessarily, any system of lawwhich undertakes to regulate the conduct of all the members of a community must, as a result of uniformity, operate unjustly in particular cases. All that we see around us in nature is the result of law, and in its uniform and impartial operation no condition of worldly power is respected; its heavy hand is laid equally on prince and peasant. All death in nature results from the transgression of some law, wisely devised for some great, final purpose, but operating in the particular instance, so far as our finite minds may be able to see, without apparent reason or justice. It is not the purpose of this paper to decry against the observance of those rules which conduce to certainty, accuracy, and the obtaining of truth from the best sources, in the administration of law, but in a hasty manner to make sugges tions about some matters which seem to me to encumber and fetter the law and to obstruct the attainment of justice.

Those matters which mainly delay and defeat justice in our courts are matters wholly of procedure and practice. Little objection can be made to the rules of law governing the substantial rights of litigants. They are the result of the accumulated

wisdom of the ages, and have been refined upon and changed to suit the ever-varying conditions of humanity. The object of prac tice and procedure should be to enable us to get as simply and rapidly as possible to those rules of law which govern a case upon its merits. Too often, I regret to say, these rules are made an instrument, not to arrive speedily at the justice of the case, but to delay, and in many cases to defeat justice altogether.

It would seem that the greater part of the time of the courts. should be taken up in considering the merits of cases. Without having made any special examination, I will venture to state that the majority of questions raised in the cases which appear in the last ten volumes of the Georgia Reports are questions apart from the merits of the controversy, and relate to practice, procedure, evidence and pleading. The time of the court which should be expended in dealing out justice upon the merits of the case is wasted on trifles, upon the question of whether the party got into court exactly right; whether he could amend a clumsy declaration and set up the truth, or whether, because the declaration is inartistically drawn, the court can never hear the truth of the case, whether the case ought to have been continued, or whether the judge in his instructions to the jury deviated a hair's breadth from technical abstract law, when no injury could possibly result, or whether a witness was allowed to testify to an immaterial opinion. These, and other like questions and trifles, vex and worry the courts to such an extent in many cases as to obscure and conceal the real issues.

The common cry about the delay in the administration of criminal justice is not well founded. There is little danger of a failure of justice in a criminal case where the accused is in jail and is under indictment. His person is securely held to answer the court's sentence. Criminal cases are triable at the term at which the indictment is found. There is no six-months imparlance term, as there is in civil cases. The indictment is sufficiently technical if the offense is described in the language of the Code. The courts invariably give way to the trial of criminal cases. The real trouble is in the administration of civil justice, and that is where delay and technicality hold full sway.

There is a distinction between those rules regulating proced ure and practice which have some great policy behind them, and those which are without reason, except that they are a heritage from former times. Necessarily there must be rules regulating the conduct of parties in court. That system of procedure is best, however, which has the simplest rules. A plain statement of the case, free from formality, and a plain statement of the defense, likewise free from formal statement should be the pleadings, and these we now have in a measure in the Neal Act. And this brings me to the first great reform that, in my judgment, should be made in the pleading. Our Code breathes a liberal spirit towards amendment. It allows amendment to any extent, with only the limitation that no new party shall be brought in, nor shall any new cause of action be introduced; but these two limitations on the right to amend have been so construed by the courts as to almost emasculate the provisions of our amendment law and render them little better than useless. A just demand -hould not be defeated by the defective statement of it by an attorney. Substance should not give way to form. It ought to be enough that the general nature of the claim is stated in the petition; that the transaction complained of is actionable; that the defendant has legal notice of it by service, and that the court has jurisdiction. If this be the case the law should allow any amendment which relates to the transaction referred to in the declaration, even if it does make legally complete a defective cause of action, and even if it makes, in a legal sense, a new party. Can any sensible man say, calmly, why, with a prayer to the court to have his rights meted out to him, with the defendant served with the court's process, and before it to have his rights determined, the court should, with a microscopic eye, look at the declaration, construe it against the pleader, and if some link in the chain of facts which makes up the case be left out, refuse to allow it to be supplied because it would make a new cause of action? What trifling with human rights! Of course, the same liberality should be allowed in amending the defense in the case. It is not meant to say that when substantial amend

ments are brought in, the case should proceed to trial without postponement, if surprise is occasioned. On the contrary, the court should be clothed with the broadest discretion to grant postponements to such time as is reasonable to allow the parties to meet the new issues.

Not only should amendments be allowed which, while relating to the transaction declared on, introduce technically a new cause of action, or a new party, but the plaintiff should be allowed to bring in any other claim against the defendant of the same general nature with that declared on, whether it grew out of the same identical transaction or not. There is no sense in allowing a plaintiff to originally join two or more causes of action against the same defendant, sounding in contract or tort, and not in allowing him subsequently to bring in the same matter. Here again the court should have power to grant a reasonable postponement. If the several distinct matters declared on in an original declaration could be tried together, they could as well be so tried if brought in by an amendment. So far had the pendulum swung against the allowance of amendment up to the time of the Ellison decision in this State, that there was scarcely a conceivable amendment, outside of a mere change in names, or dates, or similar small things, that was not held to create a new cause of action. It was argued that as the declaration stood, when demurred to, it made no cause of action, that it required an amendment to complete the case, and that, therefore, this made a new and distinct cause of action. By this narrow process of reasoning, the very spirit of the law of amendment was throttled. Our Supreme Court revolted against it in the case of Ellison against Georgia Railroad, 87th Ga., p. 691, and it is to be hoped that the principle there laid down will be adhered to and extended. The court in the secord head-note well states the reasons for allowing amendments in these words:

"Amendment is a resource against waste. It proceeds on the principle that it is better to preserve what has been done and improve on it than to throw it away. There is as much reason for