The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-09-05

prety of addressing the reply to you, be- fore whom the attack was made.
 When a Judge Ought to Speak
 '.The occasions are rare when a judge can with propriety publicly discuss the merits of his own decisions. The right Of criticism is essential to the public veal and its exercise is oftentimes beneficial to a judge Where he is alone concerned or the case is not one of general public interest he may well remain silent under misrepresentation. There are times, how ever when it may become the highest duty of a judge to speak freely about decision after it has been made on full consideration of the evidence and argu- ment of counsel Such duty arises when q decision which concerns the interests of thousands of people of the state, Is made the occasion for repeated and vici- GUS misrepresentation by agitators on the stump and in the public prints, and con stant efforts are made to delude and de- ceive the people and foment popular dis content and unrest about the decision and to inspire hatred against the court and disbelief in it's honor and integrity. It is as cruel and as wicked a thing to excite causeless suspicion and distrust of the purity of the courts, whicn are the last refuge of the citizen against wrors and oppression, as it is to seek to Induce father, to doubt the virtue of a blame less daughter, or a husband to suspect the chastity of a stainless wife. Men who engage in such work are enemies of their ! kind, and every man owes a nigh duty to society, on all proper occasions, to re- sent and expose such efforts.
 Had I or my reputation alone been involved in the attack upon the rate decisions, or they had been criticised merely no matter how ignorantly or unskillfully, I would not say word The decisions have not been criticised They have been misrepresented and de- nounced merely by libels upon the good faith and honor of the men who LOOK part in them. l therefore speak Necessarily. as many questions of law and thousands of pages of testimony must be considered. and many faets lascertained from the testimony, opih- ions which deal with rate cases are un- avoidably lengthy. Printed in the news papers, and not in convenient form Tor reading and preservation, the ordinary layman, in the busy affairs of everyday life. has neither the time nor the pa tience to read them, much less to study them. I doubt if any of you have read a line of these decisions.
 Decency and Fair Play Ignored
 "The correctness of such decisions or the honor of the judge who rendered them have never before been consid- cred a fit theme to be discussed be- fore a student body on their grade- ating day However. if they are sub iects for their consideration, the com monest sense of decency and fair play demands that the assailant of the de- cisions present the questions involved with the utmost candor as to the truth, and giving the whole record as 1t IS. The first question which occurs 10 any honest man when asked. as you have been. to pass adverse judgment upon decision is, why the man who com plains of it did not present the decision itself and point out the particulars wherein 1t is wrong in law or incorrect as to it's conclusions on the facts, in- stead of eontenting himself with vio- lent language and reckless statement about the evidence, not one particle or which was laid before his hearers
 "The next questions which come un- bidden to your minds, when former governor of the state attempts to ar raign before you judge, and one of his predecessors, are: Who Is the assail- ant and what is his motive for the as- sault? Who Is the assailed and whaf is his motive to do wrong? Is man who has been repeatedly honored by the people of Alabama and faithfully served them from his youth up, to be measured by the dictates of common honor among men, or is he to be meas ured in the scales of coarse. bestial hate, according to the standards of the low minded and vicious? The involun- tary reply doubtless came into your minds, although an undue sense of what is due an invited guest may have pre- vented the putting of it in formal words, that the phillipic in the baccalaureate did not take the place of reason and truth, and that neither the time nor the place nor the matter of its comment addressed themselves to your judgment.
 Attempts to Gull and Deceive You
 ITEM NO. 1.
 'Throughout the address manifests a personal hate to d judge which disdainc to keep it's statements in the pathway ol truth. catalogue of its sins may tire your patience, but l must refer to some of them. Speaking of the final decree. which restored the old rates, it says. The issue is whether the decision of this inferior court shall stand against the combined wisdom of the appellate court, and the welfare of the people ot Ala bama The only thing the appellate cour' ever had before it was the injunction is sued against the Eight Group Acts as the case then stood, before the whole evidence was in That appellate cour, has never seen the evidence taken by the masters on which the final decrees were rendered or had any proceeding before it. which involved the final decree and of course could not have expressed any opinion upon its correctness or upon the evidence upon which it was founded. It is silly therefore, to speak of the final decree as being against the combined wisdom of the appellate court.
 ITEM NO. ?.
 ''When the inferior court issued the preliminary injunctions more than four years ago, against the enforcement of the eight group acts, it was of opinion that the evidence palpaby overcame the pre- sumption which the law draws, in the absence of evidence. that rates are not unrea sonable A little over two years before enactment of the statutes in 1907, the Alabama railroad commission, after an elaborate investigation, found that the intrastate or domestic rates, which were restored this year by the final decree, were wholly unremunerative. They had been approved by the commission as reasonable and just, year after year. There was nothing to show that conditions had so changed after the making of that examination as to convert rates which were insufficient then, into exces- siye rates at the time of the Inquiry before the court. The question was sub mitted on a mass of ex-parte affidavits taken by both sides. and making many hundred printed pages. These affidavits in the opinion of the lower court made 1t plain that the rates were confiscatory. Shippers and passengers were given am- ple bond in the manner suggested by the statutes, to refund any excess In rates if the contentious of the railroad proved unfounded. while if the railroads finally proved their cases and the rates