only make itself felt through a local organization, which shall include every practicing lawyer worthy to be admitted to membership. It is much to be desired, therefore, that as a result of this Centennial celebration such modifications may be made in the by-laws regulating the terms and conditions of membership, that no one will hereafter be deterred by the expense. The subject is now under careful consideration, and if all the members of this great bar can be thus united under a single organization, it ought to exercise a dominant influence in upholding and maintaining the standards and traditions of the Philadelphia bar. The full meaning of these words can only be understood by those who have some familiarity with the history of this Association, and the men who founded and perpetuated it. Arrangements have, therefore, been made by the committee to secure the preparation of papers, which will preserve some reminiscences of the life of the bar in the middle of the century, and of the methods of teaching pursued in some of the more important offices where systematic instruction was given. One or more volumes to be made up of these papers, and to include also some of the more important speeches and addresses now found only in periodicals or fugitive publications, cannot fail to be of interest to any one who reveres the great men of the past, and will prove that we are not indifferent to "the moral and intellectual affluence of those who have gone before which remains to enrich their posterity."

The first duty of the committee having charge of this celebration, however, was to secure a fitting history of the Association, which this day completes one hundred years of service, and happily, our fellow-member, James T. Mitchell, was prevailed upon to prepare an address to which you will now have the pleasure of listening.

HISTORICAL ADDRESS

by

HON. JAMES T. MITCHELL

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Mr. Chancellor and Brethren of the Bench and the Bar:

We have met to commemorate a hundred years of united corporate effort in the best interests of the bar and the profession of the law. It is a difficult but perhaps an agreeable effort to put ourselves mentally in the situation of our predecessors of a century ago. The colonists of America came mostly as adventurers, if not as refugees; in Massachusetts for religious freedom, not for tolerance; in Virginia and Maryland to found a landed aristocracy; but Pennsylvania was founded as a great princely palatinate for the founder, dominated by humane motives, religious fervor and zeal for liberty of conscience, but backed by wealth, intelligence, influence and high position. Philadelphia speedily became the leading city of the colonies. The founder intended it as a "green country town," but the advantages of wealth and concentrated effort, added to a fertile surrounding country or "hinterland," soon brought it to the front rank. Not even the far-sighted Penn foresaw the nineteenth century's blaze of mechanical progress and subjugation of physical nature, or anticipated the consequences. A hundred years ago, Philadelphia's inventors, Fitch and Fulton, had not realized the dreams that were ultimately to put Philadelphia in the rear. After a five or six weeks' voyage across the stormy Atlantic, another day or two on the peaceful waters of Delaware Bay and River were not material. The world of that day, commercial and other, was in no hurry. It was not until steam began to reduce time to a count of hours that the inexorable logic of events drove Philadelphia from its prominence. So it came about that in the early years of the eighteenth century Philadelphia became

the leading city, not only in population, wealth and enterprise, but also as the first center of intellectual activity. Its character was distinctly scientific. Here was the home of Godfrey, Rittenhouse and Hamilton, and hither had come Franklin for a wider field of operation for his universal genius. The medical students of that day went to the fountain head at St. Andrew's, and the lawyers to the Inns of Court. They brought back the best legal learning of their day; but here at home they missed the conversations, the readings, etc., of the Inns and that communion which Coke calls the life of the law. The bar was the bar of the United States. Here Congress had held its sessions and the Supreme Court had sat. One of the earliest and most important efforts to found a law school was made in the law lectures of James Wilson, delivered at the University of Pennsylvania and honored at the opening by the attendance of President Washington.

It is difficult to illustrate the early days of the profession, for want of materials. Nearly sixty years ago, that most learned antiquarian and accomplished gentleman, the late John William Wallace, endeavored to found a legi-historical branch of this Association, and in the preliminary circular he said: "How sad is it to think that separated not yet by much more than half a century from colonial times, it is impossible for any mind to find materials wherewith at all adequately to illustrate in any particular the provincial bar or bench of Pennsylvania, and only by those whose unreflecting minds will think that what has not been shall be, will it be doubted that unless we strive to avert this result, the same destiny awaits the men of our time on whom we now look as conservators and landmarks of society and our profession." And ten years later, Mr. Binney wrote of the primitive bar of the province: "We know nothing or next to nothing of the men who appeared at the bar from time to time up to the termination of the colonial government. The statement of Chief Justice Tilghman in the Bush Hill Case (Lyle vs. Richards, 9 S. & R.) reveals to

us all we know, and probably all we ever can know in regard to this subject; for, as the grandson of Tench Francis, who was Attorney-General in 1745, and connected by marriage and association with the most eminent families of the bar, he knew as much of the former bar as any of his contemporaries, and they have all long since departed without adding anything to what he left." Of the first bar after the Revolution we have the delightful sketch left by Mr. Binney under the title of "The Old Bar;" and, at the time of the birth of our Association, the leaders were still on the stage, while many of the juniors lived down to the memory of men now not much past middle age.

The want of a library was the crying need. Books in that day were of value; no longer, it is true, chained to the desk to keep scholars from yielding to temptation, but still scarce and precious. Law books then were not mere merchandise. The legal world had not yet surrendered to the manufacturer and the bookmaker, nor would any publisher have dared, even if he could truthfully do so, to send out, as more than one does now, boasting circulars that he makes law books by the million. Books were written by men who had a call to write, and who sought in that way to pay their debt to their profession.

There is no royal road to learning now any more than then. But the difference is that the men of that day knew it, and were willing to face the arduous ascent, even though it began with black letter and Norman French. Blackstone wrote his commentaries not for students at law but for the landed gentry to whom as country magistrates or hereditary legislators some general idea of the law was a fitting if not an altogether necessary equipment. In 1802 there were but eleven volumes of American reports in print all told. The number published in the year 1900 alone, Mr. Hewitt tells me, was 150 official volumes, besides what Mr. Wallace called a "flying squadron" of side issues, law journals, etc. In the face of this let me read you what Chancellor Kent, twenty years later, says on this subject: "The States

are multiplying so fast, and the reports of their judicial decisions are becoming so numerous that few lawyers will be able or willing to master all the intricacies and anomalies of local law existing beyond the boundaries of their own State.

* The danger to be apprehended is that students will not have the courage to enter the complicated labyrinth of so many systems, and they will of course neglect them and be contented with the knowledge of the law of their own State and the law of the United States." And here is his view of the way of the law student: "I have now finished a succinct detail of the principal reporters, and when the student has been thoroughly initiated in the elements of legal science, I would strongly recommend them to his notice. The old cases prior to the year 1688 need only be occasionally consulted and the leading decisions in them examined. Some of them, however, are to be deeply explored and studied, and particularly those cases and decisions which have spread their influence far and wide and established principles which lie at the foundation of English jurisprudence. Such cases have stood the scrutiny of contemporary judges and been illustrated by succeeding artists, and are destined to guide and control the most distant posterity. The reports of cases since the middle of the last century ought in most instances to be read in course. They will conduct the student over immense fields of forensic discussion." (1 Kent, 445, 496.) Do you wonder that men who grew up on that diet were vigorous of brain as well as of body?

The bar was small in numbers, necessarily compact and closely connected by business that brought them in daily contact as colleagues or opponents; but the esprit de corps needed something more; it wanted a common meeting ground outside of the railed arena, and above all it wanted an arsenal of the gladiator's weapons-a library. The general need brought a united remedy, and in 1802 it came by the establishment of the Law Library Company.

The Law Library Company dates from the thirteenth of March, 1802, when the preliminary articles of association,