vents my attending meeting of Bar Association. This is a great disappointment to me. My regards to the members of the Association. JOHN M. HARLAN.

Upon motion, the Secretary of the Association was instructed to telegraph Justice Harlan the regrets of the Association at his inability to attend.

The Secretary sent the following message to Justice Harlan: Lookout Mountain, Tenn., July 30, 1896.

The Tennessee Bar Association instructs me to express its regret at your inability to attend. We hope we may have that pleasure at some future meeting.

CHAS. N. BURCH.

Secretary Tennessee Bar Association. Then followed the report of the Committee on Judicial Administration and Remedial Procedure, read by Lewis M. Coleman, Esq., the Chairman of the committee. The report is as follows:

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION AND REMEDIAL PROCEDURE.

To the Bar Association of Tennessee:

We are not blind to the many evils that have crept into the administration of the laws in our State, and we are well aware that there is much room for remedial legislation. It is not our province to merely raise our hands in holy horror, and declaim against the abuses which the most casual observer can discern in the execution of our laws. At each of our meetings we should select the most dangerous disease, tear off the covering which its supporters have ingeniously thrown over it, and expose its hideousness, then bend our every energy to eradicate it from the body politic and forever vanquish those who grow fat upon it.

There are many sores upon our body politic which are ever enervating and destroying it. By the prayerful thought and work of our honest and patriotic citizens alone can we ever hope to remove the cause and heal the wounds. There is no silver nor golden panacea for these. But of all the diseases our State has inherited, or to which it has been exposed from its antiquated laws and the dishonesty and carelessness of

officials, the most loathsome and dangerous is the abominable criminal cost system now in vogue. This system has always been radically wrong. However, when our State was sparsely settled by that noble race of pioneers who turned the forests into green fields and fallow land; when every man felt himself a guardian of the honor and treasure of the State, it was tolerable. But now, when population has been congested in our towns and cities; when our citizenship has been swelled by an ignorant and irresponsible race, prone to such crimes as delight the hearts of the fee hunters, the system has indeed become unbearable, and the State, emaciated and worn by the ravages of this gnawing cancer, has only strength enough to raise its suppliant arms and beseech its honest and loyal sons to rescue, ere it is too late.

The citizens of Chattanooga, led by her commercial bodies, have heard this call and are already enlisted in this Red Cross Society. Chief among them have been members of the Young Men's Business League, whose Legislative Committee, with our able and public-spirited friend, the Hon. John H. Cantrell, as its Chairman, has with much thought and care investigated the practical workings of the system. The facts and figures to which we now invite your attention are largely taken from the reports of that committee.

The county of Hamilton has a population under the census of 1890 of 53,982; its assessed wealth for the year 1895 was $20,277,535. We do not believe that the population of this county is less law-abiding, nor that the fee hunters are more ravenous, than in the other three most populous counties of the State, therefore we give figures for this county in detail.

Under our statutes the costs, where the prosecution has been unsuccessful, or the money cannot be collected from the defendant, which is usually the case under a system which insures costs, are paid by the State and county; by the State where the prosecution is for offenses punishable with death or by confinement in the penitentiary, except where there is a dismissal or a nolle prosequi, and where the defendant is discharged before indictment, or after indictment and before a verdict, in which cases, and in all misdemeanor cases, the county pays the costs. The exceptions mentioned were enacted in

1891. A greater burden is thereby placed on the individual counties, but it was a wise enactment; it brings the evil nearer to the public eye, and once clearly seen, it will surely be removed.

The costs of criminal prosecution in Hamilton County for the year 1895 were as follows:

Costs paid by the county, as shown by the records of the County Court:

Circuit Court Clerk and Attorney-General's cost. . $13,313 10 Jury and witness fees (mainly the latter)..

Officers' costs...

Justice of the Peace costs.

Sheriff and jail fees..

Total

14,515 85

11,440 54

8,432 10

8,229 10

.$55,930 69

Costs paid by the State for prosecutions in Hamilton County alone, from Dec. 19, 1894, to Dec. 19, 1895, as shown by a statement made by Hon. James A. Harris, Comptroller:

Making the startling total for Hamilton County of $78.695.11. The total State and county taxes levied upon the real and personal property of Hamilton County for 1895 was $185,007.47. You will therefore see that the cost of criminal prosecution was 42.5 per cent. of the entire State and county county taxes so levied, or about 50 per cent. of the taxes actually collected; or $1.50 per annum for each man, woman and child in the county.

The Comptroller's report shows that for the year ending Dec. 19, 1894, the criminal cost bill paid by the State out of its treasury was $265,084.20. A conservative estimate made from the reports received from many counties places the

amount paid by all the counties of the State at $750,000 for the same period; you will therefore see that the total cost to the taxpayers of Tennessee for the prosecution of crimes in 1895 was more than $1,000,000. The figures for 1895 indicate that this costly prosecution failed to lessen prosecutions, but rather encouraged hungry officers and witnesses to renewed efforts.

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If that enormous sum were paid to hard-working and conscientious officials and witnesses, worthy of full faith and credit, and any good results were to be accomplished, we might bear up under the burden, but when very large part goes toward the prosecution of petty misdemeanors, such as assult and battery, battery, lewdness, vagrancy and the like, and the fees quickly find their way through the hands of avaricious officers, professional witnesses, and "pikers," in to the open maw of the licensed fee buyer, we may well stand aghast at the damnable spectacle. Perhaps some of our members do not know what a "piker" is. You will not find it in Bouvier, hardly in the Standard. A "piker" is a biped, usually in this part of the country of an ebony hue, who seldom attends Sunday school and never works, but always shadows dives and low saloons. He is a stirrer-up of criminal prosecution, hence his name. He is open at all hours for engagements, and cheerfully appears as prosecutor or witness for the State, preferably the latter, however, as the compensation is more certain. He is the right bower of certain unscrupulous Justices and officers. If he can stir up one prosecution he is sure to have half a dozen others for perjury, profanity and various crimes and misdemeanors following in close succession; in each case he is a willing witness for the State.

An examination of the records of Hamilton County shows that a youthful negro "piker," a denizen of East Ninth street, received county warrants since February of last year for witness fees in twenty-one cases, in which he swore valiantly for the State, the sum of $93. In one of these cases he captured $9; in four others, $7 each.

Another "colored gemman" from this same malodorous neighborhood was even a more lusty swearer than the first,

for in a little over seventeen months he captured, in seventeen cases, the sum of $90 witness fees. In one case he got $13, and in two others $9 each. Neither of these valiant swearers, strange to say, received full faith and credit, for in the twentyone cases in which one labored, nineteen of the defendants went "scott free," one was fined $5 and the fine suspended, while for the sum of $754.74, estimated cost, excluding a large amount of jail fees, paid by the county for the prosecution of these twenty-one cases, the only return was the services of one negro in the work-house for three months. A pretty high price for a bill of sale for him in the flush times before the war! And so we might cite instance after instance if time permitted.

If the evidence introduced in behalf of the State before the Justice of the Peace is sufficient to raise the presumption of the defendant's guilt, it is the duty of the Justice to bind him over to the Circuit Court; otherwise to dismiss him. In these dismissed cases the Justice is careful to certify a bill of costs to the Circuit Court under this iniquitous law. It is the duty of the Judge and Attorney General to inspect these bills of cost and disallow those in cases that are believed to be malicious or frivolous. At the January term, 1896, the Justices of Hamilton County sent up 477 of these cases. The Judge and Attorney General disallowed seventy-six. Some of the Justices seemed to have had pretty good judgment as to what kind of cases to send up, or else knew how to certify them, while others seemed less fortunate. The 401 allowed cases cost the county $2,402.15. The disallowed cases cost at the rate of $1.70 apiece for the Circuit Court Clerk for putting them in shape to be passed on, and 15 cents for the County Court Clerk, making a total of $1.85 per case-a total cost for the Justices' dismissed cases of $2,541.75 for one term. the same rate there would be for the three terms per year 1,431 such bills of cost presented by the Justices for allowance, while the annual cost to the county would be $7,625.25, and as his share the Circuit Court Clerk would get $2,432.73. you imagine why cases dismissed by a Justice of the Peace should cost the tax-payers anything? Surely such a system puts a premium on dishonesty, and ought to be remedied.

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The above figures show the enormous wrong which, under