struction of this section when it comes before the court I don't know, but as it stands no man can get his property back when sold under an execution, no matter how void, without paying the purchase money. That is a specimen of special legislation, and undoubtedly was carried through by somebody having a case to which to apply it.

C. C. Bonney, of Illinois, said:

I desire to offer a few suggestions in relation to the paper on "Defective and Slipshod Legislation," read by Mr. Sterne last evening. It is a subject which can hardly have failed to attract the attention of every practicing lawyer. It is impossible to exaggerate the evils which flow from the source to which that paper refers. We all listened with deep interest to the presentation of the subject made by the learned author. In the main I concur with the views. which he expressed. No matter whether the suggestions made be precisely those which the future shall deem wise enough to carry into effect, they will attract the attention of the profession and the public, and promote the desired end. The reform of a great evil is not a holiday matter, but a serious, and oftentimes a long and painful undertaking. Let us confront this subject as it deserves. It is time not only to speak with the vigor of the paper to which I refer, but the time has come for serious and sober action by our profession.

Some difficulties to which the paper does not refer confront us. We are met at the outset with an almost universally erroneous public opinion on the subject of legislation. Until we meet that difficulty, until through the voice of the profession, which alone can act in this matter in the first instance, the public opinion on the subject of the qualifications of legislators and their duties is corrected, all hope of any effective remedy must be vain. Not only is

public opinion seriously at fault at this time, it has always been wrong from the founding of the government down to this hour. We have waited a century to begin the vast work, which none of us should underrate, of correcting that erroneous public opinion.

And that is not the only difficulty. When we attempt, to set public opinion right in regard to the matter of defective and slipshod legislation, the proposed reform will be combatted by every corrupt influence which seeks to pervert the offices of the government to its purposes. The moment the profession raises its voice in behalf of reform of this great evil, every demagogue who seeks public favor by appeal to the lowest instincts of men, will raise an outcry against the expense required to frame and enact proper legislation. Mr. Sterne's paper set forth with some distinctness of detail the method of procuring private legislation in the mother country-that counsel are employed to inspect the bills, and to oppose their passage if not consonant with the public welfare. But if such a plan were instituted here, what an outcry would at once be raised against it! There is but one way to meet evils of this kind: the profession must raise its voice in denunciation of things which it cannot approve, and not sit idly by.

The fundamental error, out of which grows the erroneous public opinion to which I have alluded, springs from the fact that in the founding of our government we obliterated the hereditary governing class, but substituted nothing in its stead. Amid the trials of that early day there was a spontaneous response to the demands of the country which resulted in the admirable early legislation which is still the delight of every student of the law; but as the country advanced in its growth, and its interests were developed, we forgot that we had made no substitute for the hereditary governing class of other countries, and that, from its

nature, the patriotic charity of voluntary and self-denying service must be temporary. Although we recognize in all private callings the necessity for study and experience and practice-nay, in one of the great departments of our government we recognize the necessity of long study and experience to fill the judicial bench,-still, when we come to the no less difficult and important matter of legislation, we take it for granted that all men are endowed by nature with the high genius required for the framing of statute law.

Not only is this the case, that the governments, state and national, have never, up to this hour, made any provision for professional and skilled labor in the matter of statute making, but we have committed another folly to which public attention should now be called. Because in the mother country there is a House of Lords, and because in the Congress of the United States there is a Senate to represent the equal rights of the states, therefore it seems to have been assumed that there must necessarily be a Senate and House of Representatives in the State Legislatures, and yet both of those bodies are characterized by the same principles of organization and office. This should not be so. Evidently there has always been a feeling latent in the public mind, as well as in professional judgment, that there should be two legislative houses for some purpose, but that purpose has not been clearly discerned, or, if discerned, it has not been clearly defined. What, then, can be suggested in this behalf? It is this: in contributing the results of experience, in acting on a matter of public policy, the judgment and suggestion of the blacksmith, the farmer; the merchant, the banker, are just as much entitled to respect as those of the highest scholar or professional man. As to the mere matter of discussing public policy, and deciding whether a measure of a particular kind is required, an

assembly of men drawn fresh from the people, and representing every class in the community, and every interest in the state, is the proper body to determine such questions, and they ought, in my judgment, to be determined, as has sometimes happened in this country, and not infrequently in the mother country, not on the details of a statute, but upon a simple resolution of inquiry whether or not the proposed legislation ought, or ought not, to be enacted in the State.

Then, above this body of popular representatives should sit the Senate, to take the measures which the popular judgment has approved, and embody them in the clear and exact provisions of a well-drawn statute. Statute-making is not only strictly professional work, it is the very highest order of such work. The text book of Story on Equity Pleadings tells us that the drawing of a well constructed bill in equity requires great accomplishments, and the endowments which belong only to highly gifted minds, and yet that is a summer-day pastime compared with the difficult task of framing a wise and well constructed bill for enactment into a law by the legislature. Because the bill in equity deals only with the facts which exist, while the statute maker must look into the future, and endeavor to perceive the various contingencies and difficulties which may arise.

Hence I suggest, in addition to what was set forth in the paper of the gentleman from New York, that we will find the best skilled body for the delicate work of statute-making, and the effective prevention of "defective and slip-shod legislation," in a slight reconstruction of the Senate, in our various state legislatures, by making them consist only of experienced professional men, assimilated in tenure and compensation to the judiciary.

There is little more that I care to say, but among the things which escaped my attention for the moment, and of

which I made a brief note while listening to the paper last evening, was this: We have never had in this country any standard of the civil service, legislative, executive, or diplomatic. We have standards of judicial and legal procedure. We have standards of army and naval service. We have the naval academy and a military school, in which are trained, continually, young men drawn from the congressional districts of this great nation. I desire to call attention to this great omission. I have long thought what I now declare, that to make the system of goverment complete there should stand also, side by side with the naval and military academies, a CIVIL SERVICE ACADEMY, in which the arts of statesmanship and diplomacy should be taught, to fix a certain standard of excellence for the American people, and to hold up this standard before those who seek preferment in public life, to show the nature and extent of the qualifications which they should try to acquire. It is not that none but those who graduate in the military or naval academies succeed in obtaining honor in those professions, nor would it be so in civil life, in case the school which I advocate should be established, but the influence of such an example could not, in my judgment, be over-rated.

In conclusion, let me repeat that I think the time has come for our profession to raise its voice in favor of the great truth that in a free country, government must be the supreme business of the people. The hand of the government is over all, to protect or to restrain. It is amazing to see that in American public life the public service goes limping on a beggar's dole, while the great private institutions command the highest order of talent by paying what it is worth. The error of a false notion of public economy ought now to be rooted out of the public mind. When the governments of the United States and the several states of this Union shall begin to regard government as the