Surely if the Federal government has no power to regulate marriage and divorce, it could not assume that power by making a treaty with a foreign nation concerning the status of married people of the foreign country in one of the States. If the Federal government has no power to regulate the classification of children in schools supported by the State, its attempt to guarantee to a foreign nation by treaty that it will do so, is as null, as to the States themselves, as a direct attempt against the State would be.

An illustration of this may be found in the power of the Federal government over fisheries. Unquestionably the Federal government may treat with Great Britain touching fishing along the Newfoundland Banks. Its power to do so is derived from its jurisdiction over the high seas. But if it attempted to enter into a treaty with Great Britain, notwithstanding the decision of the Supreme Court, whereby, in consideration of concessions by Great Britain, it undertook that citizens of Great Britain might fish in the waters. of Chesapeake Bay, contrary to the rights of the people of Virginia, or shoot in Connecticut, contrary to the rights of the people of that State, can any sane man pretend that, because the treaty-making power of the government is exclusive, it is also absolute, or that it cannot be questioned by the States affected when the government attempts to make a treaty with a foreign nation upon a subject, over which it has no jurisdiction?

If the Federal government is thoughtless enough to enter into such a treaty, whereby it assumes to guarantee, within any State, things which it cannot control, such ill-advised action brings it face to face with a dilemma in which it must either fail to perform its treaty obligations or violate its guaranty to the States.

Without having studied the case thoroughly, it seems to me that the Japanese treaty presents just such a case. lf so, the Federal government owes its first duty to the States. and should notify the foreign government holding such a treaty that it will not call upon any State to execute such an

obligation, because it has no right to do so, and because it assumed the obligation unadvisedly, and cannot perform it against the protest of the State.

Every State in the Union would sustain the government in such action and would favor a war rather than see a sister State forced to yield the point, for the attempt to enforce such a treaty would be to break down every barrier of States' rights. Moreover, any foreign nation entering into negotiations with the Federal government is presumed, when it does so, to know the extent of Federal power, and that the Federal government can no more, under a treaty, invade the reserved rights of the States, than it might under any other form of Federal enactment.

The recent speeches of President Roosevelt seem to indicate a singular ignorance of the boundary line between Federal and State powers.

The governor of a State who should devote his addresses to discussing how the United States Navy should be organized, or how foreign commerce should be regulated, would be justly chargeable with volunteering advice in matters in which he had no voice.

The case would not be different, as it seems to me, from that of a President who devotes his time to addresses upon child labor, fellow servant laws, and the like, which are subjects for consideration of the States, in the exercise of their reserved powers. He might profit by the story of the little darkey who when asked why his nose was so short replied, "I dunno, sir, but I spec it was to keep me from pokin it into other folks' bizness."

Gentlemen of the Maryland bar, I am neither an extremist on States' rights nor an alarmist. Jealousies of Federal power and apprehensions such as we find expressed in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice White, in the Northern Securities case, have always rather amused me. They are mere nightmares. Why do I think so? Because I have unbounded faith in the common sense of the American people and their ability, when aroused to the fact that either

Federal or State aggression is seriously attempted, to rise to the occasion and redress the abuse. This faith too quiets any alarm about the future.

I have pointed out to you only a few of the subjects to which the extremist doctrines now prevalent would, if they could, extend Federal power.

I believe the people of all the States love their States too well to be willing to see them shorn of their ancient dignities and bound captives behind the triumphal chariot of centralization as mere handmaids to do its bidding on minor subjects. At least I know this to be so in the Old Thirteen Original Colonies. The feeling is as strong in Massachusetts as in Maryland or South Carolina.

No President has ever been elected on any platform of supreme Federal power on all subjects, or on the theory of increasing Federal dominancy based upon changed social and industrial conditions. These are new doctrines discovered and propagated since the last election. I do not believe any political party will dare to plant itself or seek popular support upon such a platform. If it should do so, I am equally convinced it will be many a day before the people of this country will be deluded into support of such a suicidal policy.

But the time has come when the majority of thinking men, who equally reprobate the opposite extremes of certain rival politicians, should say to them, "A plague on both your houses." We should rejoice at their reluctant confession that party allegiance, according to old alignments, sits very lightly on most men's shoulders in our happy land.

It is a time when we should look about us and try to find some conservative leader, be his party antecedents what they may, who will plant himself on a platform generous in its recognition of Federal authority in its proper sphere, and yet tenacious of the reserved rights of the States. One who is neither a czar nor a socialist, a dictator nor an anarchist; one who in fact as well as in profession believes that this indestructible Union is composed of indestructible

States, that the preservation of each is indispensable to the preservation of the other, and that the old time religion of John Marshall, Roger B. Taney and Salmon P. Chase, on constitutional questions, is good enough for us.

It would be well for these self-constituted constitutional excursionists, some of whom declare that statutes already pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, are nevertheless good laws and should be retained upon the statute book, to remember that after all their empyricism has been indulged in it must at last confront and pass under the calm scrutiny of that great tribunal composed of lawyers and not of doctrinaires which has blazoned this great truth across their pathway as a warning to them, in letters of light which the wayfaring man though a fool may read and understand.

"We are bound to interpret the Constitution in the light of the law as it existed at the time it was adopted, not as reaching out for new guaranties of the rights of the citizen, but as securing to every individual such as he already possessed. Such as his ancestors had inherited and defended since the day of Magna Charta." (Mattox vs. U. S. (1895), 156 U. S. 237.)

So long as the Constitution is construed by that great tribunal to which Virginia gave Marshall and Maryland gave Taney, we shall never have occasion to sing

The despot's heel is on thy shore,

Maryland, my Maryland.

His torch is at thy temple door,

Maryland, my Maryland.

Empyries, egotists, doctrinaires, enthusiasts, demagogues and cranks, will continue to propound new theories of Federal and State relations, and certain of the people, sometimes a few, sometimes many, will be deluded sometimes by plausibility, sometimes by eloquence, sometimes by the argument of convenience, sometimes by this, sometimes by that. Then these strange new doctrines will run their full

course and be like the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven.

For the Supreme Court, by the light of calm truth, by the fire of incorruptible integrity, by the inexorable logic of unclouded reasoning, will test them to their last analysis, will weigh them in the balance and find them wanting. And our glorious Union of States, which make a Nation, and our glorious Nation, which will lose its glory when its States shall cease to be, will go on, relieved of such heresies, strengthened by such vain assaults, in its marvelous career, like Goethe's star

"Unhasting, unresting"

to a destiny, the possibilities of which seem boundless.

Ferdinand Williams, of Cumberland: I move that a vote of thanks be extended to Mr. Wise for his address, to which we have all listened with such profound interest. The motion was seconded and unanimously carried. The President: The next business in order is the report. of the Committee on Admissions.

Harry E. Mann, of Baltimore City: I beg leave to submit the following report:

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON ADMISSIONS.

Mr. President and Members of the Association:

The Committee on Admissions have the honor to submit the following report:

In view of the large number of practicing members of the bar, who are not members of this association, your committee thought proper, with the sanction of the Executive Council, to make some effort to increase the membership, and it gives us pleasure to report that during the year the