alone consistent with the fundamental theory that the departments are equal, co-ordinate, and independent, we reach the clear light, that, upon questions of sovereign power and policy, each department must judge for itself; and over all, the people, through constitutional agencies, in the exercise of their reserved right, may declare, in such case, what is the true intent and meaning of the Constitution, either affirming or reversing the previous declarations of the legislative, executive, or judicial branches.

No question of the grant or prohibition of sovereign power or declaration of public policy should ever be considered settled until uniformity of opinion and action has been reached by the several departments, and not then until the people have made known, under circumstances and conditions favorable to its exercise, and through such time as to assure deliberation, their approval of such concurrence. And this concurrence itself, to be binding, must be reached under the free exercise of the right of independent opinion and action, and not through the influence of the gross delusion that the courts speak on the subject "with the voice as of one having authority."

If it be objected that as to governments, to quote from Blackstone's Commentaries," However they began, or by what right soever they subsist, there is, and must be in all of them, a supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority, in which the jura summi imperii, or the rights of sovereignty, reside"-which is, indeed, the argument of necessity whereon the rightful exercise of this pre-eminent power by the judiciary is largely placed by its advocates-I reply to this abstract proposition, that the jura summi imperii in republican governments reside in the people themselves. Moreover, history affords many illustrious examples of government by conventions, as the German Empire, the Dutch Republic, the Swiss Cantons, and the Achaian League.

If it be further objected that beneficial results can only be hoped for from this process of voluntary adjustment at the end of a long period of conflict and travail, I reply, that no truly beneficial results in the world's history-physical, social, moral, or governmental-were ever achieved by "happy accidents;" and if the period of attainment of these results be deferred, it is because their right development requires it; and dissatisfaction on that account is only a renewed expression of the impatience of man with the slow processes of God and of Nature.

PAPER

READ BY

JOHN M. SHIRLEY.

The Future of Our Profession.

Our profession is one of the necessities of civilization. There is no occasion for lawyers, where the only test of human rights is the will of the strongest.

But society, even in its rudest forms, brings men into relations with each other. For the general welfare, it takes here a little and there a little from the absolute rights of individuals. The process goes on from year to year, from cycle to cycle; for the law as well as science has its cosmic forces. Common convenience and mutual necessities beget the law of custom. As wealth and population increase, these relations become more strained, artificial, and complex.

The law is the result of growth and decay; for in the law, as in everything human, there is an eternal struggle between life and death for the mastery; and therefore the great body of our law, which affects us so closely in every relation of life, cannot be administered with comparative success except through the instrumentality of a picked corps possessing the qualifications which special training and the hard discipline. of experience alone can give.

Since Bracton wrote, "Destruction and Reconstruction" have done their work. A great revolution has been wrought,

not only in the structure of the law itself, but in its processes and methods, and in the guilds by whose aid it has been administered.

Then the "law-merchant" was but a name, and the Court of Chancery another. The "custom of merchants" was not recognized by the courts as a part of the common law for nearly three hundred and fifty years; and the stout resistance of the common lawyers to its adoption, which they regarded as a usurpation, was not silenced until the final decision in 1765-one hundred and fifty-six years later. Waltham had not then invented the subpoena which made the Court of Chancery "The deformed transformed." Manufactures and the statute against monopolies were unknown, and the arts and sciences were at their lowest ebb.

The profession, as it has existed in England for centuries, divided into two great branches, was then unknown. The rigid policy of the common law was to compel all parties to appear in person, and, with the aid of the court, try their own causes. First came advocates, variously designated,— known as a standing order prior to 1255; as barristers, in a restricted sense, as early as 1291; and since, as barristers of various degrees, or as counsel. Potential as this body has been, it was the creation not of statutes, but of custom. Barristers were not admitted to practice by the courts, but were called to the bar by the Inns of Court. Probably no body of men equally potential were ever so little subject to statutory regulation.

Attorneys in fact, as contradistinguished from attorneys. at law, have existed from the dawn of the common law. At a later day, in certain cases of emergency, a plaintiff or defendant, with the sanction of the court, might select some friend or deputy to take his place. The parties had the right to employ such agents to represent them in the king's courts, provided they first obtained a license from the Crown