draw all nations unto it, just as the Supreme Court of the United States, which was a purely experimental thing at first, under the leadership of Chief Justice Marshall, in his great opinions, drew the sovereign States of the Union to its Bar for the settlement of all justiciable questions. Another class, of course, can not be settled by such a court. Crimes like that of the Kaiser in 1914-an attempted crime, rather, for he was not able to carry out his purpose-will be met and punished by some form of war; boycott, or arms, or what not. But this new court will put the sovereign nations under law-real, binding lawnot the diplomatic decisions of arbitration councils or tribunals, which, useful as they are, are bargains, as we all know; but decisions like the law of your Supreme Court or ours; and that law, binding law, will broaden down from precedent to precedent, accumulating a body of law which shall govern in such

cases.

Burke said, "Slavery is to live under will rather than law." This court will do all that any court could do to establish the reign of law as against the reign of force. "And its sanction?" you ask me. The only effective sanction will be the enlightened public opinion of the world approving the reason and justice of the decisions. It is the public opinion of the United States, not the Army and Navy, never invoked-which never would be invoked as between sovereign states to enforce the decision of the court that gives effective sanction to the judgments of our Supreme Court. Of course, only judicial questions can be settled by a court. National independence can neither be arbitrated nor adjudicated; nor can similar questions; and so long as governments are more selfish than the best of their citizens, we shall find governments acting selfishly. Cavour, to whom Mr. Taft referred, wrote to Mazzini-and both were idealists, each in a different way; "We do every day for our country what we would be great rascals to do for ourselves." We know very well that the responsible statesmen, when they come to such decisions, may be influenced by selfish considerations.

Nevertheless, as the historic steps from the universal private warfare of the old days, between individuals, first to arbitration and then to judicial settlement, marked incalculable advance for individuals, even though some individuals in the very heart of civilization still settle quarrels by personal fighting, so the adoption, now, of judicial settlement by a permanent court on legal principles and with binding precedents (after a century of successful arbitration) marks great progress for nations, even though some may at times fight out their quarrels or settle by arms what cannot be settled by courts.

Britain rightly, from her viewpoint, rejected the freedom of the seas doctrine in the Fourteen Points. Why? And this is the crux of the whole matter. For self-preservation. And

such a question she would never submit to any international tribunal, much less to a super-executive government.

Practical idealism takes the best possible in this imperfect world. Just now the best possible is, in my judgment, an agreement on the basis that laws, not men, shall govern within, and between, the nations.

The new Mahomet, the Third Internationale, is preaching with force and arms, and great stolen wealth, its militant doctrine of the "dictatorship of the proletariat,' " of "absolute personal obedience" (I am quoting from Lenine) to the men having the supreme power in the Soviet state. One Big Union, one international system, one flag, red as with blood. No home, no church, no courts of law, only executive tribunals of arbitrary caprice. Of course, no laws, only arbitrary degrees varying from day to day. Conversion by the sword is the avowed purpose of the new anarchy, literally without laws. "Obedience to law is liberty," wrote Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, one of our great jurists on the Court House at his home city, Worcester. Yes, and "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." Our old political differences, and all other questions, are insignificant compared with the great imminent soul-searching issue now challenging mankind.

The great war is at once followed by a greater war. That was for political freedom; this is for social freedom. That was between nations; this throughout all nations. This is really radical in that it goes to the roots of our civilization-the existence of society.

Lawyers are instinctively hated by the Red Revolutionists. That is as old as the days of Jack Cade. "Let's begin by hanging all the lawyers," he said. Lawyers, sometimes tools of tyranny (we remember Empson and Dudley), but generally servants of justice, must lead in rousing the peoples to the terrible dangers threatening them. There have been far more Erskines than Empsons. Lawyers are natural leaders of the people, as Mr. Taft said. The lawyers must defend the constitutional principles, whose history, whose meaning, they know better than the laymen. Unfortunately, the laymen are almost totally ignorant of their meaning and their history. They must inform the laymen, who will always act rightly when they know accurately.

Under the new attack of the Third Internationale in the United States, covert, by "boring in" to our labour unions, and-mark this our churches, our schools and colleges; overt by such strikes as Winnipeg's, handled to the honour of the province and of the Dominion, by the forces of order and law; these enemies of mankind, with a true instinct, strike at the judiciary as the chief obstacle to red revolution, and just as the old kings struck at it as the chief bulwark of liberty.

"We, the people of the United States," begins our American Constitution, "in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice," etc., do ordain this Constitution. And to establish justice they put the national judiciary beyond the power of themselves as the sovereign by a self-imposed restraint which would preserve for all time, in tenure and salary, the absolute independence of the judges who were to pass upon the acts of the representatives of the people in the executive and the legislative departments. The Supreme Court, not the Executive or the Congress, is the last fortress of our liberties.

The people must be reminded that the rich and strong can take care of themselves under any system of government. They are doing it now, those who survive and who can be useful to Lenine, under the Soviet Government of Russia. But the poor and weak, little as they understand it, have no protection for life or property but an independent judiciary, administering law.

With that in view, the American Bar Association defeated the movement for the popular review of judicial decisions and the popular "Recall" of the judges themselves, under the temporary gusts of passion or disappointment, even when it was led by ex-President Roosevelt. The lawyers will have to make, I doubt not, a similar fight again, and not in our own country only, because it is a very popular delusion that was preached at that time.

An independent judiciary is a very modern thing. When William and Mary landed in England, Serjeant Maynard, the oldest English barrister, then over ninety, presented the Serjeants' address. "You must have survived all the lawyers of your time," said the new King. "Yes, Your Majesty," replied Serjeant Maynard, "and if you had not come I might have survived the laws as well."

It is news to most lawyers, but not to you, that it was not until the Act of Settlement after the Revolution of 1688 that the independence of the English judiciary was established. Before that time Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, sovereign after sovereign, had told judges how to decide, and removed those who would not obey their will. The King was to them, not only figuratively, but literally, "the fountain of justice." As many a sovereign thought, the King's Bench was the King's own court to do as the King willed, its judgments in his power as in his name, just as the Lord Chancellor was his personal representative detailed from his suite. That the King's judges should be independent of the King's will was the novel teaching of patriot lawyers, often martyrs. It was a great achievement of struggling democracy, which, now sovereign, is equally self-restrained by the Act of Settlement.

"Our fathers meant us to be free,
As much from mobs as kings,
From you as me."

With us in the United States the people is the sovereign. It is actually so with you. We must see that it knows its duties as its rights. The people,not the convention, added to our constitution the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, without which they would not ratify the constitution, every one of them to limit the sovereign and protect the individual, and to protect minorities. We must be the sovereign's remembrancers, we ministers of the law, servants of freedom. With us, immigration, the change of economic conditions, the activities of demagogues, and now above all the revolutionary propaganda make it essential that we should remind the sovereign of its own Bill of Rights, and of its own danger from foes within rather than without, and especially warn against a government of men, not of laws.

The Father of Lies, rebel against law, is the great Anarch. He is our chief adversary, working through the selfishness of men. But the God of Truth, of Freedom and of Justice shall win again and again, and the laws of His universe, which cannot be repealed by Soviets or congresses or parliaments shall prevail against the gates of hell. Each for his own country may well pray

"God of our fathers! Thou who wast,

Art, and shalt be, when those who flout

Thy secret presence shall be lost

In the great light that dazzles them to doubt!

We, sprung from loins of stalwart men

Whose strength was in their trust

That Thou woulds't make Thy dwelling in their dust,
And walk with them a citizen

Who build the city of the just!

We, who believe life's bases rest

Beyond the probe of chemic test,

Still, like our fathers, feel Thee near;

Sure, sure, that while lasts the immutable decree

The land to human nature dear

Shall never be unblest by Thee."

ADDRESS BY HON. W. E. RANEY, K.C.

Your Excellency, Lord Cave, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and
Gentlemen:-

Let me first congratulate the Canadian Bar Association on the national and international character of this event-international at all events in an Anglo-Saxon sense-and especially in a Britannic sense.

Stupendous things have happened since the birth of the Canadian Bar Association five years ago. These things interfered with the growth and development of the association and at the annual meeting last year the air was still heavy with the sulphurous fumes of war, and we were still too close to the cataclysm to get a detached view either of ourselves or of other peoples. Now the outlines of our surroundings are fairly well defined, and big though the time is with political and social turmoil, we are meeting at the capital of our beloved country under most auspicious circumstances, so far as Canada is concerned, and indeed so far as all the Anglo-Saxon nations of the world are concerned. But there are great problems ahead of all the nations and the lawyers of Canada must not return to their briefs with the comforting assurance that, God being in His heaven, all will be well with the world, without any assistance from them. As perhaps never before, the times call for wise counsels and for the active participation of all the best citizens in the affairs of their country.

One of these public affairs in which all Canadians, and especially all Canadian lawyers, ought to be interested is the status of the British over-seas Dominions.

A by-product of the war is said to have been the birth of Canada and Australia and South Africa as nations. Others prefer to say that the war only led to the discovery of what had already long been the fact. Be that as it may, this is at all events true that there was no official recognition of the overseas dominions as autonomous States until the war, and that now the fact is officially conceded not only by Great Britain, but by all the other nations of the world.

Of course, the birth of a nation, or the discovery of the birth of a nation, and of their own nations at that, must be a profound event for the lawyers of Canada, and it was fitting that they should invite their relations to assist in the celebration of the event. May we therefore, regard this as a lawyer's national birthday celebration, and Viscount Cave, and Mr. Taft and Sir Auckland Geddes as wise men from the East and South come to honour the new star in the national firmament.