XV ADDRESS AT THE DINNER THE Committee which arranged this dinner has had some troubles, and its chairman has asked me to announce that several disquieting things have happened without its fault. The purpose in giving this dinner was to tender a tribute to the Honorable Morgan J. O'Brien, and yet the committee feels much aggrieved to find that Hamlet doesn't figure on the first page of the program, and the chairman has asked me to announce that this is entirely through a printer's error. However, I think that is a matter which the honorable gentleman can outlive. There is another subject which causes us all keen regret, and that is the enforced absence of the honored president of this association, Judge Cullen. He certainly is the "grand old man" of this organization and, barring the question of age, may be deemed to be one of the grand old men of our profession. At the last moment however, he was obliged to give up being here because a sickness which has detained him at home for some days finally led the doctor to advise him that he must seek another climate. The sudden call upon me as vice president of the association to take Judge Cullen's place raised with me the question which has excited so much attention lately; that is, the question of preparedness, and I have really never had so much apprehension about it as I have 1 Remarks of Mr. Taft, toastmaster, at the Annual Bar Dinner of the New York County Lawyers' Association, given in honor of Hon. Morgan J. O'Brien, February 26, 1916. to-night. However, I must do the best I can. Mr. Strauss, my fellow vice president, and myself have had something of a stage play as to which of us would preside, but his modesty has prevailed. I have a diffidence about addressing you gentlemen. And yet you don't seem so very formidable. I have no such hesitation about addressing the courts, so numerously represented here to-night, but that is a matter of habit. When it comes to addressing the keen intellects of the bar, however-well, I hesitate. I am reminded of a story that Lord Campbell relates of Lord Eldon. He was obliged to address a goldsmiths' dinner, and was in a high state of trepidation. He said: "I had just as lief address the members of Parliament or the law lords in Parliament as I would so many cabbage plants, but I find a great diffidence about addressing the goldsmiths." I have the same feeling to-night. I understand that Judge Cullen, who, in his way, is a little bit of a martinet on such occasions as this, has taken pains to write to each of the speakers and place a limit of time upon them. I don't know what the limit is; I haven't asked any questions; but, whatever it is, I am going to remove it. I think a fair spirit of reciprocity to the judges of the Appellate Division, which has now so generously extended the time for arguments of counsel, demands that all limits on the length of the speeches to-night, at least of those of the judges, should be removed. So, as Shakespeare says, gentlemen, you will for the time being have to take your place on the "windy side of the law." But I will venture a story in that connection. There come to New Haven from time to time on Sundays representatives of rural churches to address the students in the chapel of Yale College. The tend ency of the rural preachers to extend their sermons is not a thing which is congenial to the students. On one occasion one of these preachers came to New Haven who had a little bit more consideration than is usually characteristic of that class of pulpit orators, and he said: "Mr. Hadley, is there any limit of time that is imposed upon the ministers when they address the students?" "Oh, no, not any limit at all," Mr. Hadley said, "but I think I ought to say to you, sir, that there is a tradition that no souls are ever saved after fifteen minutes." Now, I hope that the gentlemen who are to come after me don't take these remarks as personal. Perhaps they would say that I am talking too long myself and that I had better sit down. However, I want to say a word about what this and other associations have been doing this year. A good many of us in this Association have been drawing reform constitutions for the state and reform projects of procedure, and, like the three tailors of Tooley Street, we have presented them to the world with some circumstance; and nothing more has happened. But it has all been beneficial. Subjectively it has done those of us who have done the work some good. It has cultivated our power of legal analysis. It has given us an opportunity of exercising our originality. And originality and the power of analysis are great things in the law-of a great deal more significance oftentimes than deadly precision. Of the reasons that are given to support the opposing contentions of counsel, one or the other must of necessity be wrong, and we half the time give reasons that prove to be bad. I always believed in that form of instruction in the law which gave credit for reasons whether right or wrong. I remember there was an old lawyer who used to be a professor in the Cincinnati Law School when I attended there. His name was Judge Yaple, and he especially believed in the value of originality of thought. He always gave credit to his students for it. I remember on one occasion he asked a student what was the difference between a conditional limitation and a contingent remainder, and the student answered, "Damned little," and he gave him fifty per cent. Mr. Choate has characterized this Association as the great democratic association of the state. I choose to think that there is no democracy or aristocracy in our profession except the aristocracy of character and fidelity and public service. But what Mr. Choate meant was that this Association was more comprehensive in its membership than any other association, certainly than any other active day-to-day association in this country, and I want to say just a word in favor of such associations. They do great good. No individual among us can attempt to extend the sphere of his influence very widely in a population like the city of New York of six millions of inhabitants. The bar here now approaches twenty thousand members. It becomes absolutely essential for the preservation of the moral health of our profession that we should associate ourselves together in order to defend the standards of correct conduct by which we should all be guided. Indifference to matters of ethical conduct and professional conduct is sure to grow up in a profession of the size of that in this city unless its individual members have some consciousness that there are those in the profession watching over them and vigilant to restrain them from lapsing into practices which would do the profession no credit. In a bar of two or three hundred I conceive that such associations are little needed; but in a bar so numerous as |