St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-10-04

1
National Policies-Worko of the
Legal Fraternity Apparent in
| ALI Public Enactments and AT
fairs of State.
An adjourned meeting Of the State
! Bar Association of Minnesota was held
] yesterday afternoon in the capitol, with
Judge Flandrau presiding. Edward H.
! OZmun was appointed secretary of the
| association, instead of Robert Jamison,
who resigned on his elevation to the
district bench Of Hennepin county. The
presidents address followed the ap-
pointment of secretary, and was as
follows:
Gentlemen of the State Bar Associa-
ton: You did me the honor at your
last meeting to choose me as your pres
ident. l, of course, accepted the APP
| pointment, thinking, without egOtism
on my part, that in one respect might
| be entitled to it. | do not, of course,
refer to any qualifications of learning
or ability that appertain to myself, but
rather to that peculiar recommendation
of age that is thrust upon US all wheth-
er or no. l think 1 can say that l am
the oldest active practitioner, in dura-
ton of service, in the state at the pres
ent time. If l remember correctly,
there were no members OF the bar who
| are now alive when l came to
the territory, except George l..
Becker, Morton S. Wilkinson, Henry
l.. Moss, William P. Murray, Lafayette
| Emmett, Judge r. r. Nelson. Judge
Isaac At&ater, and my much esteemed
partner and contemporary, Horace r.
| Bigelow. All these gentlemen are,
| thank the Lord. alive. and in the active
pursuit of happiness, but they are out of
legal practice, except perhaps my
friends Wilkinson and Murray. If
they, or either of them, will say they
are in practice, am the last man in the
world to deny their assertion, and l
| cheerfully rate myself as subject to
their prior claims; but all the rest of
! them have gone on to the bench or into
/ other lines of business. So l have
pretty we'll established my claim to the
oldest practicing lawyer.
have tried very hard to get some
! member of this association to deliver US
| proper address on some subject of
! interest to the bar, but with the char
acteristic modestY of the lawyer. they
| have all declined, and | am compelled
f, to call you to order without an address.
| except such as can offer You witho ut
much preparation.
Associations of the bar are all very
! well III their way, but | have not yet
| seen any marked advantages flowing
| therefrom. We have county and city
associations. but they don't seem to
effect any special advantage to any one.
Lawyers are very independent people,
and are 10th to be governed by the
| views or wishes of others as to til e
manner of carrying on their business,
and it must be re membered always
| when considering the bar that its mem
berS differ more widely than the men,
| berS of any other association or as
sembly of men. You will find a man
| who by his superior natural endow-
ments far surpasSes his fellows, and
you will also find man who by his
| FLOODING INDUSTRY AND CAREFUL
! WORK
establishes himself in the confidence of
the business community; and you will
also find the man who has gained the
reputation of unbending honesty, all of
| whom upon their peculiar claims call
upon the public for recognition and
| support. No system can unite such
men; each stands upon his own founda-
! ton in respect to his own clients, and
/ each is entitled to charge fees common
| Surate with his professional standing.
No rules of any society can regulate
matters of this kind. An association
may agree to maximum or minimu m
fees. but what lawyer will be CONTROL ed
by its DEGREES? So in the general in :
| veStigation of the advantages of asSocia-
| tons of this kind ! am led to the con-
| clusion that if they have any raison
d'etre it consists in the ability of organ
lied force to assert itself whenever it is
called upon to express itself upon any
| given question.
There can be 10 doubt at all that the
bar of the country is the most potent
force in the government of the republic.
No state legislature can be convened
without predominance of lawyers in
its makeup; and no desirable policy
was ever promulgated and eDgrafted
upon the accepted theory of state that
did not emanate from the pen or the
head of a lawyer. This condition of
things does not stop with the state legis-
latures; it is found to penetrate into the
federal department of the government.
1t is rare thing to find senator who
Is not a lawyer, and the same may be
said generally Of the members of the
lower house. and when it can't be said
it is generally accepted that the mem
bers who do not bear the stamp of the
legal fraternity are not found to be es-
peclally prominent, or they are cranks
of some kind or another. SO it will be
seen that the bar is a potential force IL
the government machine.
Our republic is young, it is a good
deal of an experiment as yet, and this
particular juncture of affairs proves
how liable it is to become the victim OF
dangerous and crude theories of finance,
and many other alarming possibilities
arising from the ill-digested conceptions
of queer people who gain admission
into our national and state govern.
ments. This is condition of things
that flows necessarily from our purely
popular system of government; every
man is the equal of every other man be-
fore the law; and whenever COM
munity entitled to representative in
the state legislature or the congress OF
the United States is dominated by il
iiteracy, or what is worse, people who
| possess that dangerous element spoken
of by the poet as "a little knowledge -
then it may be expected that men who
never should be admitted into the coun-
ellis of the nation will appear and tor
ture the body polite with
ABSURD CYLINDRICAL THEORIES,
which have long ago been tested and
found wanting, but are looked upon by
these adventures as newly discovered
panaceas for all existing evils and
wants. This is inevitable in a republic
SO large and fresh as ours, while whole
states are guided by fanatics who prob
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