INDEX. I ABSOLUTE POWer, an AmericAN INSTITUTION, S. E. Baldwin. ATTACHMENT OF THE BODY UPON CIVIL PROCESS. H. C. Robinson. 295 BILLS OF LADING GIVEN FOR GOODS NOT IN FACT SHIPPED, I., II. CONTRACT EXEMPTING EMPLOYERS FROM LIABILITY FOR NEgli- 169, 219 75 B. J. 197 352 151 RIGHTS OF PARTIES TO SALE OF PERSONAL PROPERTY. SOME CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS ARISING UNDER THE FEDERAL SOME PECULIARITIES OF OUR NATIONAL MINING LAW, J. B. 327 THE EFFECT OF A DECREE OF CONFIRMATION UNDER THE CALI- THE INFLUENCE OF THE EIGHTEEnth Novel OF JUSTINIAN, I., II., THE RIGHT TO COMPETE FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT. E. B. Smith. 156 207 308 245 COMMENTS. ANTI-TRUST LAW. CONTRACT ONLY ANCILLARY TO SALE OF BUSI- 138, 235 CONTRACTS IN RESTRAINT OF TRADE. Diamond Match Co. v. CONTRACT WITH GOVERNMENT IN TIME OF WAR. INJUNCTION FOR 365 404 'CONVICT-Made" Goods, STATUTES REGulating Sale of, 316 ELECTRIC LIGHT COS. RIGHT OF DISCRIMINATION EVIDENCE. ANSWER TENDING TO INCRIMINATE BEFORE PENSION EVIDENCE. INVOLUNTARY CONFESSIONS. PATENTS. INJUNCTION AGAINST INFRINGEMENT BY FOREigner, PREFERRED CLAIMS OF LABORERS AND MATERIAL MEN EXTENDED REGULATION OF REQUIREMENTS FOR PRACTICING MEDICINE, 367 43 THE BRAM TRIAL. 186 274 136 272 It is the peculiar province of this Association to study those principles upon which American society is based and by which its conditions are controlled. Laws may be passed and repealed in quick succession; individuals may rise to positions of commanding influence, only to be swept off in a moment into political oblivion, by a sudden turn of party tide; the rules of science, the inductions of philosophy, accepted for ages, may, as some new door of Nature's laboratory is unlocked, shrivel into ashes before the issuing flame; but in every land, civilized or barbaric, where a strong race has long made its home, there will be certain institutions of civil society, that have grown up to slow maturity, so rooted in the soil, that they form part of the nation's life, and make its history. It is to such an institution that I desire, this evening, to direct your attention-an American institution, and one that, as the centuries roll on, is destined, I believe, to exercise greater and greater power in determining our country's destiny. Among the constitutional governments now existing in the world, the United States rank as the oldest but one. It is, indeed, fairly open to question if our place is not the first. Britain, since our Constitution was adopted, by her union with Ireland and the introduction of a hundred Irish members into her House of Commons, followed by the Reform Bill and the recent Franchise Acts, has essentially changed the character of *Being the annual address, delivered August 30, 1897, before the American Social Science Association, at Saratoga. The main body of the address was also delivered before the Georgia State Bar Association, at Warm Springs, Georgia, July 1, 1897. that body, and transformed a monarchy into a representative democracy; while the new name of Empress of India, given to her titular sovereign seems but to mark the abandonment of her ancient colonial policy, too mild for an oriental race, too rigorous for the great English-speaking dominions that have risen up under her flag, to gain for themselves, one after another, substantial autonomy. The United States are the offspring of a long-past age. A hundred years have scarcely passed since the eighteenth century came to its end, but no hundred years in the history of the world has ever before hurried it along so far over new paths and into unknown fields. The French Revolution and the first empire were the bridge between two periods that nothing less than the remaking of European society, the recasting of European politics, could have brought so near. But back to this eighteenth century must we go to learn the forces, the national ideas, the political theories, under the domination of which the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. There is something in that instrument that gave it coherence and vitality; something on which we have built up institutions that are real, traditions that are imperious, a national life that is organic, a national history of which no civilized man is wholly ignorant, a national power that is respected on every sea. What is it that has brought us on so far, and given us an undisputed place among the great powers of the world? Is it a broad land and a free people, equal laws and universal education? Yes; but how are those laws administered? How are the forces of this great government that rules from sea to sea across a continent, directed and applied? How, and by whom? I think it may be fairly said that of the leading powers of the world, two, only, in our time, represent the principle of political absolutism, and enforce it by one man's hand. They are Russia and the United States. The Czar of Russia, indeed, stands for Russia in a broader sense than that in which we can say that the President of the United States stands for them. The people of the United States have not put all their power in the keeping of all or any of their temporary rulers. They are the sleeping giant, that sleeping or waking is a giant still. Their word is still the ultimate rule of conduct-their written word. But when they gave their assent to the Constitution of the United States, they created in it the office of a king, without the name. |