pectators in this contest and are anxious to secure ommittees not adverse to them. The juntas of muicipal politicians in power, or those who desire to be 5, are willing to support this or that politician for the osition of speaker, dependent upon his pledge to apoint members on the committee of cities. Thus comined and corporate interests, which should engage the ratchful and jealous eye of government, and against hose power for evil it is the province of the Legislaure to protect the community, are generally the most ctive during the earliest days of the legislative seson to secure advantages of position, so as to prevent nfriendly action or secure favorable measures during

s progress.

The result of this contest is that to some degree, arying from year to year as to extent, sinister eleients control or influence the composition of the comittees, and these courts of preliminary inquiry for gislative action are either packed or made harmless r baneful, by having injected into them members hose action upon a large body of legislation is deterined or pledged in advance of the session. In many ndividual cases that action is already determined pon, before this contest takes place, indeed, as preiminary to candidature; but as this condition of hings belongs rather to the domain of representation han to that of legislation, I can pass it by.

The speaker elected, and committees formed, bills re then in rapid succession, presented by individual egislators, are read by their titles, and referred to heir appropriate committees. They are generally ills which have been placed in the hands of the legis ators to give some one man or body of men some adantage over his fellows, or through the instrumentalty of the law to exonerate some man or body of men rom the burden or pressure of the general law, or to ive to some locality the right or privilege to do or rerain from doing something which either the law forids or requires to be done. Here and there a general ill is offered, intended for the general public good. But the majority of the bills, which find their way to he speaker's desk, and are by him referred to the repective committees, do not belong to the latter class. These bills are not prepared by the individual legislaors themselves, who are frequently ignorant of the ontents of the measures they propose, but by lawyers vho are privately retained for the special interests which the bill is intended to serve, and who-naturally ealous to serve a client and incorporate in the bill all hat may be of service to him or it-are little mindul of the consequences, in the event of its passage, of uch a bill on the general body of the law. That legisation so conceived and so promoted requires the most ealous watchfulness at the hands of a body of imparial and scientifically educated legislators would appear o be self-evident. Instead of this however but few of he members are experienced lawyers, and the methods of legislation fails to aid them in sifting bills thus roposed and promoted, but on the contrary the exist ng machinery is an aid to bad, and an impediment to good law-making.

When a corrupt or ignorant judge renders an erronous judgment he wrongfully transfers property from out one individual to another, and the direct pecunary mischief is probably ended with that single case. In the case of legisition, the consequences are much more far reaching. The damage created by a bad law applies to hundreds of cases and is incalculable in ex

tent.

Prof. Walker in his recent vork on Political Econfew lines in the English omy says of the evil effects of a Poor Law, 22 Geo. III:

"Such may be the effects of a foolish law. The leg

islator may think it hard that hi closely restricted; but he has no

power for good is so eason to complain of

any limits upon his power for evil. On the contrary it would almost seem that there could be no nation, or any race of men which a few laws respecting industry, trade and finance, passed by country squires or labor demagogues, in defiance of economic principles, could not transform within a half generation into a nation of beasts."

The nisi prius trial machinery of the common law, which is given as an aid to a judge in the formation of a sound judgment and to prevent injustice, should characterize the procedure of the law-making body so as to prevent them from committing the more serious injuries arising from the greater consequence of their

acts.

Yet how far short of this procedure is the practice of the Legislature, even during the earlier period of the legislative session. Then the committees give some degree of consideration to the bills which come before them; they read them; appoint a day for argument by giving notice to the advocates of the bill, and if by any happy accident, adversaries to the bill know that a measure is pending which affects them injur iously, they also have a chance to be heard. At such hearing assertions are made in favor and against the bill.

There is no attempt made to take proof and all that is done judicially to advise the committeemen is by short and unsupported statement of counsel. If the bill involves large interests, the more effective work is done by the trained lobbyists, who through political influence, by promises to obtain support for other measures in which the members of the committee are interested, sometimes even by promise or payment of moneys, manage to secure the consent of a requisite number of votes to secure either the passage or defeat of a measure. I am quite willing to concede that there is not nearly so much corruption in our legislative halls as would be implied by the moneys expended upon lobbyists. As from the nature of his operations he need not give to his principals, an account of his expenditures, he is irresistibly tempted to exaggerate the sum that he is called upon to pay to the legislators. That the lobbyist can however obtain any money at all from persons or corporations of large means, whose interests may be menaced or promoted, under the pretense of bribing members, shows the low esteem in which our legislative bodies are held by the chiefs of our industrial community.

Toward the end of the session, bills then introduced are frequently not printed; they are acted upon by committees under great pressure to finish their work before the end of the session. They are frequently not placed in the hands of the standing committee, but are at once referred to the committee of the whole and by it to a sub-committee of the whole, known as the grinding committee, and when the vote is taken, it is generally taken in ignorance of the scope and purport of the measure. In these last days of the session, votes are generally bargained away for counter votes from fellow members for measures of a like nature. We can make clear to our minds the monstrous character of this proceeding if we would suppose a court of justice, on finding its calendar incumbered with causes which cannot be tried before the summer vacation, dispensing with the taking of the testimony of witnesses and argument of counsel, and deciding such causes upon the pleadings alone. The miscarriage and travesty of justice which would result from such a course partakes of the same nature, if we would but see it, as the mischief which annually takes place at Albany, and at most, if not all, other capitals of the country, in the corrupt and slip-shod method of grinding out laws toward the end of a legislative session.

It may be said that the passage of a statute has no analogy to a lawsuit. Not to have seen the analogy has been one of our great national errors. By a legal fiction, deeply embedded in our jurisprudence, we have assumed that every statute, whether public or private being the act of the sovereign people is dictated by benevolence, has its motives in public policy and its language prompted by wisdom. The lawyer, who is called upon to aid the court in the interpretation of statutes, oftentimes feels the absurdity of this fiction when in deference to it he speaks seriously of an intention of the Legislature, a propos of an absurd or mischievous bill which he well knows was introduced during the last days of the session; was smuggled through without debate, and which either by accident or the result of deep laid design escaped the adverse scrutiny of the few able and sincere members of the legislative body. That bills of sinister and far reaching intent are thus delayed to the last days of the session before submission, so as designedly to prevent notice and debate, is a well-known fact. That during a session a considerable number of appropriate and useful laws are passed, goes without saying, and that a great number of obnoxious bills are supressed is also true. The condition would be intolerable were it not so. But that the people regard the sum total of congressional and State legislative activity as maleficent instead of beneficent, is clearly shown by the fact that they look forward to the convening of these bodies with dread, and hail their adjournment with a sense of relief. Some few years ago I was driving with a friend through Parliament street in London, which faces the Victoria tower on the top of which brightly burned the lime light telling to all London that Parliament was in session; he said to me that he felt safer because six hundred wise and honest men were considering what was best for the Nation, and it always seemed to him no harm could well come to England as a whole, so long as Parliament sat. I could not help contrasting this confidence in the wisdom and integrity of Parliament with the feeling with which our people regard our law factories. On investigating the causes which create so great a disparity between the legislative results in the mother country and those of her numerous cis-Atlantic progeny I was forced to come to the conclusion that the greater part of the difference in results is due mainly to differences in methods.

In no other department of human activity is there any such disparity between results achieved in England and those which the United States are able to accomplish. The latter manufacture as good machinery, run railways as successfully as Great Britain does, and in many departments of human activity far surpass the mother country; for example, in the making of agricultural implements, sewing machines, pianos, machine-made boots, etc. For a reason important in this connection to discover, the American intellect has not devoted itself to improvement in its legislative machinery to keep pace with the demands of the

age.

Much of this thought stagnation, ou so important a subject, is doubtless due to the confidence that was felt, until the outbreak of the civil war, that the organizers of our government were so wise in their application of the theories of government to practice that we could dispense for all time with thinking on the subject, and that somehow this department of human activity was an exception to the law of evolution and progress. We were taught to believe that governmental questions were solved for us by a superior intelligence. This indulgence in a fetishism which has retarded our progress has now to be settled for. At every turn we discover that our institutions, if administered by the old methods, fail to offer a solution

for the new questions which modern civilization pre sents.

Organisms have grown up, dangerous to the Com monwealth, because we have carried our confidence i existing political machinery to an extreme not just fied by any principle of political philosophy. Th ready answer that it was devised by the founder stayed progress to such a degree that institutional re forms have, since 1789, found less encouragement i the United States than almost anywhere else. Ther has therefore been scarcely any improvement in legi lative machinery since the organization of the gover ment, and yet what a vast change the past one hundre years have wrought in population and condition, in creasing the four million of inhabitants, scattere along the Atlantic coast into a Nation of fifty-five mi lions, changing them from a homogeneous people farmers and planters into a Nation embracing withi itself all the diversified industries and economic want of almost the whole human family, and occupying continent which lays under contribution for its de velopment the whole field of sciences and of arts.

Washington and Jefferson probably crossed the Pc tomac on a rope-ferry or pontoon bridge. No railwa engineer thinks that a good reason for taking a trai of cars across a bridge, which though good enough fo the saddle horses or gigs of these great ancestors, i wretchedly inadequate for the perfected machinery c steam land transportation. In refusing to change th machinery of legislation fitted for the conditions o 1789, to the needs of to-day, our countrymen have bee as devoid of wisdom as would be an engineer of a rail road were he to attempt, out of respect for the wisdor of the layers of the foundations of our government t use the rope ferry of revolutionary times for his traus portation service. We still convene and manage th legislative business on the theory that we are a hom geneous Nation of farmers and planters and with machinery so wretchedly inadequate for the purpos that the wonder is that the condition is as tolerable a we find it to be.

With the application of steam to industrial pursuits the modern era of production on a large scale, and through the instrumentality of corporate manage ment began almost simaltaneously with the organiza tion of the government. Not ignoring the enormou advantages, which from a politico-economic point o view flow to society through corporate existence, and that wealth is more economically produced by con centration in production, it is nevertheless true tha the corporate conscience is something other and les developed than the individual conscience, and tha corporations require from the law-maker more watch fulness than the individual, because the corporate lif is longer, and its grasp wider; it is less considerate o private rights, it has as a rule more money than privat individuals have, and therefore more power; and i has less direct personal responsibility in the exercis of this power than the individual. Hence the neces sity for strengthening the law-making power to pre vent the citizens from being wronged by this creature of the law which has grown for want of proper and timely restraint almost into a master of the law. Eug land also freely chartered corporations, and also from about 1825 to 1845 ran mad with the new found toy o civilization-unlimited enterprise with limited liabil ity. She found the lobbies of her halls of legislation swarming with agents of her corporations buttonhol ing members, and exercising ofttimes, as Francis, the historian of the railway, says, influences of a corrupi nature, so that public legislation was impeded and pri vate and special legislation took the foremost rank in Parliament.

England's statesmen of the last generation had wisdom enough to see that successfully to cope with the

ingenuity of the captains of the modern industrial era it was necessary to arm the Legislature with additional and better methods to sift legislation so as to separate the useful from the mischievous. At an earlier period, but subsequent to the foundation of our own goyerument, the British Cabinet were converted from personal advisers to the crown, to the chief executive committee of Parliament, and as a part of the responsibility which attached to the party in power the guardianship over the law and the changes therein to be made 'to meet public exigencies was assumed by the ministry in office as part of its duties. We on the other hand, have adopted party government without attaching thereto this grave party responsibility. Our public laws and changes therein are not committed to the care of any official body. This important change in the English Constitution was the first step in legislative development and reform, which culminated in the adoption of the standing orders of 1848, and completed the separation between the method of treatment of public from private and local bills. The former are placed under the wing of the cabinet. The latter are no longer treated as legislation, strictly speaking, but as petitions to Parliament for special immunity or privileges which are conducted by private parties, subject to a strict rule of procedure, tried as a lawsuit, the petition and bill being filed before the beginning of the session and opposed at every step, as a whole and in detail, by the board of trade, and by every private interest which may be menaced or affected thereby. Counter petitions, attorneys, counsel and a trial, a standing and a day in court, before the bill can become a law to all parties in interest, prevent wrong to individuals; counsel for the ministry for the public bills, and for the private bills, committees to aid them in the intelligent discharge of their work, prevent the possibility by collusion of wrong to the public.

By virtue of this system of standing orders no private or local bill is considered by Parliament unless deposited in the private bills office sixty days in advance of the session. If it be a railway or canal project a deposit of five per cent of the estimated cost of construction must be made at the time of filing the bill. If it involves the exercise of the right of eminent domain, evidence must be given that notice of intention to file the bill has been served on all the persons whose interests are likely to be affected adversely by the legislation. Accompanying these documents as to the contents of which the most precise instructions are given in the rules, there must also be deposited a sum of money to cover the expenses of preliminary examinations of the bill in order officially to 'ascertain whether the standing orders have been complied with.

The opponents of the bill have until fifteen days be'fore the opening of the session of Parliament to file their objections to the bill and to point out wherein the standing orders have not been complied with by the petitioners. If either by the unaided investigations of the official examiners or at the suggestion of adversaries, it becomes apparent that the promoters have failed to give the requisite notice by advertisement in the public gazettes, and by personal service, or that the map is not in conformity with the bill, or in any other particulars they have failed to comply [ with the standing orders, the bill is indorsed, "standring orders not complied with," and Parliament is relieved from its consideration during that session. If tthere be a question whether the standing orders have been complied with, the parliamentary agent is heard upon the subject. If he can explain a seeming neglect, the examiners may allow the bill to be entertained, but no substantial deviation from the rules is tolerated, and non-compliance means non-consideration.

If the bill is entertained a further payment is to be made by the promoters to pay its way during its consideration in committee. Each one of these payments is about £50. Bills then are separated by the chairman of the ways and means committee and the chairman of committees of the House of Lords. Those that involve railway or canal projects or which involve the exercise of the right of eminent domain are referred for special scrutiny to the board of trade. All are examined by the chairman of committees of the House of Lords, who makes his suggestions and amendments, which are generally accepted by the parliamentary agents, who are the attorneys for the promoters of private and local bills, in filing the same and conducting them until the parliamentary committees come to consider the bill in open session. The bills are then referred for trial. The trial committees are composed of chairmen, who are members of Parliament, one or two additional members and several experts, thoroughly conversant with the technical elements of the subject-matter of the bills and who need not be members of Parliament. A calendar is then prepared containing a list of the bills, analogous in character to calendars of trial causes in a court of justice, and a trial is had in which the petitioners as well as the adversaries against the bill are represented by counsel. The question of the expediency of the passage of the measure is determined first, as a whole, on the preamble, and then by sections, and every injury direct or indirect is presented for the consideration of the committee, to be guarded, if possible, by amendments of clauses of the bill or by the awarding of proper compensation. The adversary who succeeds in a defense of a property right to secure by amendment the insertion of a clause which, in all fairness, should for his protection have originally been inserted in the draft deposited by the promoters of the bill, mulcts them to pay his costs. If the committee determine in favor of the bill they so report together with their amendments to the House, and with but very rare exceptions, the House regards the findings of a committee on a private or local bill as final. The methods of ascertaining the merits of a measure is so complete, the examination of witness and experts is so thorough, every element that can enlighten the mind of the legislator has been brought to bear with so much accuracy and forensic skill that the margin of human error after such a trial is very small. The amount paid to Parliament for considering a private or a local measure is on an average $1,000 a bill.

By these payments, which are somewhat in excess of the costs of the service of examination, private legislation is not only no financial burden to the English Parliament but even pays the expense of public legislation. Now note the very great difference between that system and the no-system of the United States. It places the business of draughting proposed legisla tion (both public and private) in the hands of skilled specialists, called parliamentary draughtsmen. The services of the best intellects from among these specialists of parliamentary draughtsmen and counsel, are employed by the speaker, by the chairman of committees, and by the ministry, and they are consulted by the parliamentary agents in important cases of private legislation. This system has caused the lobby virtually to disappear, a fair trial and no favor being now had for private bills. A member of a committee regards being buttonholed or privately talked at in the interest of a measure before his committee, almost with the same disfavor with which a self-respecting judge would regard a like attempt out of court to entrap his judgment or influence his opinion. In place of the lobby as we know it, composed of a disreputable set of go-betweens to bribe a bad measure through a committee or to negotiate

law and an examination of the history of its progress through the legislative halls is one which the policy of the law now forbids.

One other important fact was recognized by this change; that in the pressure of modern society for development the general body of the law cannot possibly keep pace with its ever varying features and necessities; no attempt therefore was made to restrict private legislation, but it was subjected to rule and form, submitted to scrutiny and surrounded by safe-guards, so that while on the one hand Parliament may meet the demands for legislation of a private and local character to vary the general law, it yet, on the other hand, to meet such exigencies, does no injustice to other private and local interests; and above all the general body of the law is not allowed to be torn to pieces at the demand and under the pressure of private interests.

We also have recognized the corruption and evils incident to our system of legislation, but have sought the remedy in a diffierent direction. Discovering that our method of dealing with demand for legislation has resulted in corruption, we determined to cut off the legislation which yields this crop of corruption. We took recourse to constitutional restriction upon special and private legislation in numerous cases which theretofore gave food to the lobby, and have said that such objects shall thereafter be accomplished by a change of the general law. This attempted remedy for an undoubted evil affords us no protection whatever, but on the contrary, within a few years after the adoption of such amendments, is is discovered that special legislation of the worst possible description lurks under the form of amendments to the general law, and instead of driving the enemy of pure legislation from the field we have driven the devil under a monk's cowl, not thereby lessening his mischievous activity, but rather enabling him still more adroitly to catch the unwary legislator. The demand for special legislation is a justifiable and a constant one; to attempt to repress it, as with every natural want, causes it to seek secret means for its gratification. The wise legislator regulates human activity, and makes no attempt at the repression of proper natural desires. Every such attempt must end in failure, and has so ended from the beginning of time.

In my own practice, since the inhibition of special legislation, in 1874, three instances of special laws under the guise of general laws were smuggled through the Legislature for the purpose of affecting litigation relating to private interests, and which changed the course of such litigations. Almost every New York lawyer in an active practice must recall like instances within the last decade. In several cases where the disguise was too flimsy the Court of Appeals recognized the attempted evasion, and declared the acts to be unconstitutional.

But many acts more skillfully disguised will pass the scrutiny of the courts unharmed, so that in many cases the general law has and will continue to be changed under the pressure of private interests, and no discovery will be made of the lurking intent of the Legislature, as a judicial inquiry into the origin of the

The constitutional restriction of the Legislature to pass special and local acts has not only failed to accomplish the purposes of the projectors of the reform, and produced a condition of affairs more dangerous than that which it was intended to cure, but it has also placed the general body of the law in great jeopardy by creating a strong incentive to destroy the general law to serve special interests. Under ordinary circumstances a special interest finding that the gen

ation, will attempt to secure by special act such legislation as will meet its requirements and necessities. In this effort it now finds itself balked by the Constitution, and it bends its energies to change the general law to meet the special case. And what is there to hinder if it has political influence and money, and is willing and ready to use both unscrupulously, or what is there to protect the general body of the law from such desecration? It is nobody's business to stand guard over the law; we have no governmental or political organization that is charged with the duty of guardianship over the statute law as England has. We look in vain for any organism in the State to protect the general law from change or invasion at the dictate of private interests. It may be said that that is part of the duty of Congress and the State Legislature. True, but the duty of initiation and watchfulness is one that must be coupled, for their habitual exercise, with responsibility, and to charge a whole body, constantly dissolving into its constituent elements, with the duty of initiation and watchfulness, is practically to charge nobody with it. In all other constitutional forms of government the dominant party which is responsible for the ministry is, through the ministry, held responsible for the public legislation during the period while the party wields power. We have no National nor State ministry to hold responsible for public legislation. The United States Cabinet is composed of executive officers, and although in their annual reports the heads of departments may suggest to Congress such statutes as their experience may have taught them to be appropriate for their administration, yet they scarcely ever venture to draft the bill, and any active interposition to secure its passage would probably be regarded as an intrusion; at all events failure to secure proper legislation is not laid to the door of the Cabinet, and they are not held responsible by the people for mischievous public legislation. Congress is therefore left without leadership on these matters of great public importance. The only leadership 'that it has is of a political character to influence public opinion, and therefore the legislation which is prompted by such leaders is not done for its own sake, but to affect an ulterior object, and is sure to be carelessly done. The little attention that is paid to the language of legislation is somewhat indicated by the fact that there is not a single American work upon legislative expression. Although I am addressing lawyers who probably have extensive libraries, among which the Law Library Series, published in Philadelphia many years ago, surely has a place, I venture to say that few of you remember the little treatise on legislative expression, reprinted from the English work of Coode, which never yet found a venturesome American editor to apply it to our needs.

The States have not even executive cabinets, excepting such suggestions of a very slight texture which the governor in his annual message may make to the lawmakers, there is no initiative for public legislation in any State organism. The party in power is occupied with the important question of how to keep the other