Waterbury evening Democrat., 1907-08-29
BAR HONORS BRYCE
Makes British Ambassador
 Honorary Member.
HE DELIVERS NOTABLE ADDRESS,

Shows How Common Law Bind1
 Two Countries Together and Dee
 clares It h the BuIwark
 of Onr Liberties.
 PORTLAND, Me-, Aug. 29.--Ambas sador James Bryce was made an hon orary member of the American BaI association by the adoption of the fot lowing resolution, presented by Fred erick w. Lehman of St. Louis:
 "In recognition of the most eminent service to law and learning, especially exemplified in his American Common. wealth. in grateful remembrance ot the special legal honors conferred up. on the former president of the ass0 citation while an ambassador at the court of St. James and in further rec ognition of the great good will existing between the kindred nations that speak the English tongue and cherish the common law between the bars of those nations, be 1t
 Resolved, That his excellency, the Right Hon. James Bryce, ambassadol of Great Britain to the United States and an honored guest, be nominated an honorary member of the American Bar association"
 Mir. Bryce delivered notable adt dress on 'The Common Law" He said in part:
 Laws are the work of nation as whole, framed indeed by the ruling class and shaped in their details by professional class, but to large exs tent created by other classes also. bes cause excepting those few cases where a conqueror imposes his own law on the vanquished) the rules which govs ern the relations of the ordinary citi< zen must be such as fit and express the wishes of the ordinary citizen. be- ing in harmony with his feelings and fitted to meet the needs of his daily life. They are the offspring of custom and custom is the child of the people, Thus not only the constructive intelS lect of the educated and professional class, but the half conscious thought and sentiment of the average man, ga to the making and molding of the law
 "On no feature of the common law did your ancestors lay more stress than on the jury and the right of every citizen to be tried by his peers. This right has been bulwark of English freedom and was deemed in the eights eenth century to be essential thereto.
 I've in England have no longer that confidence in the wisdom of jury in certain classes of civil actions which we once had, and the tendency of re- cent years has been to narrow the sphere of its employment. But the in- stitution of the jury has had some notably benefcent results. It has helped. along with the technical rules of pleading, to form in us keener sense of the need for separating issues of law from issues of fact than exists anywhere outside of England and Am- erica and has trained us how to make this distinction in every case we have to advise on or to argue.
 How great part the conception of the legal rights of the subject or citizen against the crown or the state power played in English and Ameri- can history is known to you all. Still less need dwell on the capital im- portance for the whole political sys- tenn of the United States of that doc Urine of limited powers, which has been so admirably worked out in your constitution, nor of that respect for q defined legal right which supports their provisions The life of every na- tion rests mainly on what may be called its fixed ideas. those ideas which have become axioms in the mind of every citizen. Now, it was mainly by, the common law that these fixed and fundamental ideas were molded' whereon the constitutional freedom of America, as of England, rests.
 "The law of the nation is not only an expression of it's chagacter. but q main factor in its greatness. What the bony skeleton is to the body. what her steel ribs are to a ship, that to state is it's law, holding all the parts fitly joined together so that each may re- tain its proper place and discharge its proper functions The common law has done this for you and for us in such wise as to have helped form the mind and habits of the individual citl- gems as well as of the whole nation. It is all their own. They can remold it if they will. Where a system of law has been made by the people and for the people. where 1t conforms to their sentiments and breathes their spirit, it deserves and receives the confidence of the people. So may it ever be both in America and in Eng land"