to cause such child to be enrolled in and attend some day school, public, private or parochial, for eighty consecutive days, or when the school term is less than eighty days in length, for the full term in each year in the county or city in which said child may reside, with a provision that in cities maintaining a separate school system which have a scholastic population of five thousand or over by the State school census of 1912, or any subsequent State census, any parent, guardian or other person having charge or control of any child between the ages of eight and fourteen, inclusive, shall cause such child to attend school for the full school term, also providing that any child between the ages of fourteen and sixteen not actively and regularly engaged in some useful employment or service, who is unable to read or write, shall be caused to attend school for the time above stated.

The law authorizes proper officers to enforce the provisions of this act and penalties to be inflicted for its disregard. It excuses that parent, guardian or other person having charge of a child who is not able through extreme destitution to provide proper clothing, and likewise exempts a child that is mentally or physically incapacitated from attending school for the whole period, or where the school to which said child belongs is more than two miles by the nearest traveled road from the place of residence of the child and public transportation to and from the school is not provided, or where the child has completed an elementary school course including eight grades.

Provision is made for the county and city board of education to purchase books out of the general school fund of the city or county and lend the same to a child whose parents are unable to purchase the same, under such regulations as may be prescribed by the said board of education. And where, on account of lack of clothes or food, any child is unable to attend school as provided by the act, it is made the duty of the city or county board of education to report that fact to any suitable relief agency of the county or city, and if there be none, then to the proper commissioners of the poor, "for investigation and relief."

This act is but the beginning of a more comprehensive law upon this subject, for it will be a necessary step for some subsequent legislature to take, to provide the necessary clothing and food for the children of the poor when attending school,

and without such one of the main purposes of the act, the education of the children of the destitute and the unfortunate, cannot be had. It will not do to expect such from the philanthropy of individuals, however common that may become.

Chapter eight of the Public Acts of 1913 is entitled, "An act to provide for the indeterminate sentence of persons convicted of crime and to authorize and regulate the paroling of prisoners so sentenced." This is known as the Prison Parole Act, and evidences that to which I have already referred, to-wit, the awakened conscience of the people, which manifests itself in those laws which have for their object the alleviation of the suffering and misery of the unfortunate, even the criminal.

The provisions of this act, in brief, are that in future no person over the age of eighteen, when convicted of any felony or other crime punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary, shall be sentenced to a definite term of imprisonment, but shall be sentenced for an indefinite period, but not to exceed the maximum, nor to be less than the minimum term provided by law for the crime for which the person was convicted and sentenced.

The act authorizes the Board of Prison Commissioners, who are constituted the Board of Parole, to release on parole any person sentenced as above stated, who has served the minimum term provided by law for the offense committed by him, less good time, and in considering the application for parole or recommendation for final release, the Board shall not entertain any petition or hear any argument "from any attorney or other person not connected with the penitentiary in favor of or against the parole or release of any prisoner," but shall institute inquiries by correspondence, by taking testimony, or otherwise, as to the history, physical or mental condition or character, of such prisoner, including, I take it, his conduct while in prison.

I trust there will be no member of this Association who will object to the provision which excludes "any attorney * * * not connected with the penitentiary" from presenting a petition or making an argument in favor of the parole of such prisoner. It does not appear to me to be an "arbitrary and capricious classification" to confine that practice to those members of the bar connected with the penitentiary, even though it would give to a few a monopoly of that practice.

This act provides that when a person on parole has kept the conditions thereof in such manner and for such period of time as shall satisfy the Board that he is reliable and trustworthy and that he will probably remain at liberty without violating the law, and that his release is not incompatible with the welfare of society, that the Board may recommend to the Governor that he grant to such prisoner his final discharge, and such certificate of final discharge shall be admissible as evidence in any proceeding in which such prisoner seeks restoration to the rights and privileges of citizenship.

This act in no way seeks to disturb the pardoning power of the Governor or the duties of the Advisory Board of Pardons.

This act is a step in the right direction. It is hoped that it will cure the abuses of the pardoning power of the Governor, which have had their defenders, because of the failure in this State to provide for a system of parole. But above this it is a wise, a humane and a just law, for it opens the door for opportunity to the unfortunate and provides how, at some sunrise, his soul may be born anew.

But probably that law which is of more general interest and more directly affects every citizen of the State than any other which was enacted by this legislature, is the bill entitled, "An act to remove the disability of coverture from married

"which is effective from and after January 1, 1914. I find from a comparison of this bill with Section 2517 of the Code of Mississippi of 1906, that it is a copy of that statute, except for some reason which does not clearly appear, a married woman in Tennessee, even after the old year of 1913, with the old order that obtained at common law, that so far as property was concerned, the husband and wife are one, and the husband that one, shall have been rung out and the new year and new order rung in, she will be powerless to dispose of her property "in expectancy," whereas her sisters of the unmarried state and likewise of the State of Mississippi, have that power. In a recent case the Supreme Court of Tennessee denied the right of a married woman to convey her interest in expectancy, either in inheritance or in a contingent remainder (Taylor v. Swafford, 122 Tenn. 303), and the legislature decided to keep her in this bondage.

I am informed-in fact, I know-that this particular act had the support of the women's club of this State, and no doubt the presence of so many of the "fair" in lobbying for it was so pleasing to the members of the legislature, that they cut out of the Mississippi act the words "in expectancy," that there might remain something else for the women of Tennessee to ask for, and thus secure their return to the next session or sessions of the General Assembly. It is not to be believed that the married women of this great State will remain in such thralldom when those of Mississippi are fully emancipated therefrom. However, there yet remain battles to be fought and laws to be put upon our statute book if we are to go to the extent which Mississippi has gone, for we have yet to enact a law that gives to the husband and wife the right to sue each other, and that abolishes dower and curtesy as in our sister State.

Whatever effect this law may have upon the marital state I could only prophesy, but I do know that it opens up for you, my fellow members of the bar, a fertile field of litigation where I trust you will reap rewards commensurate with the questions involved, as well as the estates conserved or dissipated, as the case may be.

Passing to the acts of Congress of a public nature and of general interest, I shall again refer you to the appendix. Mark Twain omitted from one of his books all reference to weather, and from introductory to finish nothing is said of beautiful moonlight nights, or summer zephyrs, or winter snows, but that the reader should not suffer for wants of weather news, he collected in the appendix the choicest productions of the greatest authors, beginning with Genesis, "and it rained forty days and forty nights," and coming down to Ouida, to which he invites the reader to turn whenever he feels so inclined. I extend the same invitation as to the acts of Congress, and the other acts of the present General Assembly during the year just closed.

I do desire to bring to your attention two changes in the fundamental law of the nation, both of which are worthy of your consideration, and which I could not in a paper such as this, even at the expense of your patience, omit, the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The first, that is, the Sixteenth, gives Congress the power

"to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without opportionment among the several States and without regard to any census or enumeration." This amendment has been some eighteen years in the making. I do not mean that it has been eighteen years since it received the necessary assent of both houses of Congress and was submitted to the several States for their ratification or rejection, but I do mean that it has been eighteen years since the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Company, 157 U. S. 429, held unconstitutional an act of Congress levying a tax upon certain incomes, from which time there has been a growing sentiment in favor of such amendment. The older members of the bar remember this decision, how it was received throughout the country, and the comments then made in attack and defense. It is a tribute to this country as a Government of law under the Constitution, that when, in the fullness of time, there arose in this country a sufficient popular demand for such law, that by constitutional methods the power which Congress then sought to exercise, but which the highest court of the land, by a divided bench, held had not been granted by the States, was given. The difference between an amendment to the Constitution thus made when public sentiment crystallized so as to demand it, and the overturning of the decisions of the court upon constitutional questions by a majority of the voters, is the difference between a government of laws and a government of men, a government of a majority under the constitution, and a government at the caprice, prejudice or whim of a shifting and temporary majority of the electorate, unfamiliar with the question presented to the court, and ready to throw off all restraint on legislation, if one law conceded to the benefit of the people should be held without the power of the law makers. It is the difference between a stable government or freemen, and the rule of the mob.

Congress now has before it a bill providing for a tax upon incomes, prepared by a committee presided over by a distinguished Tennessee lawyer as its chairman, Hon. Cordell Hull. That law, when enacted will, like all other tax laws, be popular or unpopular, according to the viewpoint of the one passing thereon. No doubt there can be applied to it the story of the