APPENDIX. ADDRESS OF ROBERT F. WALKER, PRESIDENT OF THE MISSOURI BAR ASSOCIATION. 1Time, the devourer of all things, has in the last quarter of a century dealt kindly with our profession here in Missouri; and, despite its insidious and destructive march we still have with us a goodly number of those who stood as sponsors at the birth of the Association in Kansas City twenty-six years ago in December, with Gov. Willard P. Hall, as its first president. I find upon an examination of our rolls that more than two-thirds of those who participated in the organization are not only living and honored citizens, but active and earnest laborers in our profession, which, more than all others, uniformly awards the proper meed of praise and the laurels of well-earned victory to the genuinely worthy. In no other profession is success won with more honest effort or the winner accorded more credit by his compeers than in the law. While the records enable us to speak well of the living, what do the facts authorize us to say of the dead? Shall we be guided by the maxim of nihil de mortuis nisi bonum, which from the time of Horace until to-day has been the controlling impulse in regard to the departed; or, shall we, as did the ancient Egyptians, try them according to the deeds done in the body and accord them an immortality embalmed in blessed memories, or kindly veiled, as the years go by, with the everincreasing folds of forgetfulness. Can we with the cold im 1Tempus edax rerum. partiality of judges view the lives of such men as Black, Broadhead, Draffen, Dryden, Hall, Henry, Hitchcock, Martin, Macfarlane, Overall, Shanklin, Shepley, Thompson, Vineyard, Vest and a score or more of others whose names are only omitted through lack of time and space, and who participated in the organization of this Association, without reaching the conclusion that they wrought worthily and well in their day and generation; that the world is better for their having lived and labored in it; that they left it full of years and honors, and in very truth 'wrapt the draperies of their couches about them and laid down to pleasant dreams? Answering the roll call in their behalf, as did the comrades of Latour D'Auvergne in the armies of Napoleon, may we not with equal fidelity to truth say that they died on the field of honor? They marched not to the blare of trumpets or amid the clank of arms characteristic of the profession of murder; nor were they burdened with empty titles or bedizened with tinseled uniforms which are but badges of servitude; but their lives, in many instances as long as that allotted by the psalmist to man, were spent in labors always arduous and often prosaic, in ascertaining the rights of their fellow men and the remedies afforded for violations of such rights; in the contests of the courts, helping to properly construe the law, and in the strife and controversies of the halls of legislation assisting in making the laws, leaving behind them monuments more enduring than moulded brass or chiseled marble. The members of this Association are familiar with the requirements of our constitution in regard to the President's address. There has been no session of the General Assembly since our last meeting, when my predecessor tersely and elaborately discussed the amendmnts proposed to the State Constitution and noted the most important recent changes in our statutes. The mandate of our organic law has, therefore, in these respects been fully complied with, but it is further directed that the President review recent congressional legisla tion, note the principal changes in the laws of other States and, if it is deemed proper, discuss such other additional matters as may be considered of value to the profession. Certainly the remaining field is abundantly fallow and it is for the tiller to make it bloom with interesting and suggestive ideas or cover it with dry details and prolix statements. At first blush a review of legislation seems a profitless and uninteresting task, but more careful consideration proves it to be otherwise. more. “Let me make a people's ballads," said Fletcher of Saltoun, "and I care not who makes their laws." Harking from the dim vistas of the seventeenth century, this is a fine saying, but except as an expression of poetic sentiment it is nothing When made, the mission of the bard had, with the general introduction of the art of printing, long before ended; the lay of the last minstrel had been sung and he had ceased to be a repository of history, an exponent of social and political conditions or an index to the march of human progress. It was true then, and it is even more true now, that the trend of public opinion, the social and political status of a people and the general level of their civilization, are best measured by an examination of their laws-those solemn enactments in which they concretely express their will. Like water, legislation does not rise above its source, and it is tinctured with whatever it touches: the character, therefore, of the dominant portion of a legislative body may be determined by the laws it enacts; and the character and intelligence of a people may be ascertained with reasonable accuracy when we know who their representatives are. A review, therefore, of legislation involves a study of sociology as well as that of jurisprudence, and if we would know collectively what a people are and whither they are tending, the laws they enact will afford the readiest and most satisfactory answer. History is replete Like begets like with proof of the truth of this statement. in legislation as in the physical world; and it is as futile to |