laws should be made and enforced as will reduce it to the lowest possible limit. Every possible safeguard has been thrown around the accused, even to the point of permitting him to hide the truth, so that, as has been aptly said:

"We have long since passed that period when it is possible to punish an innocent man. We are now struggling with the problem whether it is any longer possible to punish the guilty."

Throughout all of our land, the jails and penitentiaries, the workhouses and reformatories, are filled with delinquents who are there because our laws are not rigidly and impartially enforced. They are there having done illegal acts, because seeing crimes more flagrant in character and of greater magnitude committed by others who are either not punished, or, if taken into custody, are released through technicalities or the refinements of the law. They risk crime believing that they too will be as successful in evading the penalties of the law as have others, whom they see permitted to remain in unmolested possession of the spoils of their misdeeds.

The absurd proposition, jokingly made it is hoped, that the "unwritten law" be codified, and even let a few more judges commend a jury for following it, will bring dire results. Where one man invokes that misnomer for law, succeeds in getting off, as sure as night follows the day, he will have an imitator committing a crime with less excuse perhaps than the originator had for applying the “unwritten law" to protect him in his own lawlessness.

It must be admitted that the resourceful man, the man of energy and of action, whatever his station in life, usually succeeds; but we do not concede that because a man has means, ill-gotten or otherwise, he should be permitted to thwart justice and escape the penalty of his crime by means of legal technicalities raised in his behalf. A technicality should never be permitted to prevent exact and speedy

justice. Frauds upon justice and deception upon the courts usually take the form of a technicality built upon some deception. Trickery, of any kind, in the trial of a case is a greater crime than if practiced in any other avocation, for it shakes the temple of justice to its foundation, brings odium upon those to whom the administration of the law is entrusted, and creates distrust in the minds of the people.

The preservation of the integrity of the law is delegated to three classes of public servants, the legislator, the lawyer and the judge, and to them we look for the maintenance of law and order and an effective method for the suppression of lawlessness and crime. Not the least in importance is the lawyer, and the bar of justice becomes at once a misnomer and a farce when the lawyer overlooks the highest ideals of which he is capable, and clouds his action by personal interest or private ambition. Too often he forgets that courts are constituted for the purpose of dispensing justice, and that it is his duty as an officer of the court to render all possible assistance to that end. To many lawyers, the first and only duty is to the client, regardless of his guilt, and every effort is put forth to avoid the penalty justly deserved, and this is presumably upon the theory that the lawyer's record for acquittals is of greater importance than the welfare of society and the respect of the people for the law. The proudest heritage which a lawyer can leave to posterity is, not that he saved many guilty men from the gallows, thereby cheating justice, but that he was successful in his efforts to have every man receive his just deserts, that and nothing more.

The most serious obstacle to the proper enforcement of the law with which the people, the lawyer and the courts. have to contend is the enormous output of laws by the legislature, and the ponderous number and increasing publications of the decisions of the courts, decisions, under our system and the principle of stare decises, are as much the law of the land as the enactments of the legislatures. Hundreds of volumes containing laws upon every conceiv

able subject have been published, and thousands of reports have been printed giving the decisions of the courts interpreting enactments of the legislature, until it is impossible for any judge or lawyer to read, much less to understand, digest and apply them. How often we find in the course of a trial authority upon authority cited on both sides of a case. It is not a very industrious lawyer who cannot find a case in point on any side he may be. To determine the contested point, it is necessary to search the books and differentiate. the decisions, either actually or by inference. In such a research there will be found decision after decision supporting the same underlying principle, each court employing its own language in stating the same general conclusion. I submit that the time will come, and it is now at hand, when the court in citing a precedent will simply refer to it, instead of repeating the language employed in the case to which reference is made and immediately restating the reasoning and conclusion in its own words. It is safe to assert that in the reports already published, there are thousands of pages of printed matter which might equally as well be represented by the same number of lines. Let it be understood that we would not have a principle remain obscure because of an insufficient exposition of the reasons for it, but when a principle has once been established and the reasoning upon which it is based stated cogently, logically and fully, let it be held to have become established for all time to come, and refer to it as a precedent, instead of reiterating it and attempting to uphold it by additional and unnecessary reasoning. A well-grounded principle needs no support other than its own foundation.

This output of the legislature and courts has so obscured the great underlying legal principles as to make the enforcement of the law a matter of great difficulty and a most expensive undertaking on the part of an aggrieved individual. Law, not confusion, should be the controlling spirit. and justice, not injustice, should be the very soul and substance of our jurisprudence. No matter how plain a case

may be brought before the court for adjudication the multitude of laws and decisions may be made to produce results tending to minimize the wrong done, and often the one damaged suffers further inconvenience and expense because he has asked that the matter be decided by a judicial tribunal. While this is perfectly true, still we must not forget and can console ourselves with the thought that if all writings upon political matters, all speeches upon governmental problems and all public documents were to disappear from off the face of the earth, a plan of constitutional government could be formed from the reported cases in the courts of last resort. While we would not have it go into the record that we favored quite so stringent a penalty, it might be suggested that the law of an ancient people, which provided that if any man proposed an act in their assembly which was not enacted into a statute he was to be put to death, be engrafted into the laws of the State of Maryland. This provision could be put into force in this State with lasting benefit in so far as the enactment of the law is concerned, though it might work great hardship, in some instances, because of the loss after each session of the General Assembly of a goodly number of citizens of real value and high standing. There are a thousand laws upon our statute books today, representing unbridled local and special legislation, that could be repealed with no resulting damages. If the same treatment given the Sibylline books could be applied to many of our volumes of acts of assembly, we would have less ground for complaint than did Tarquin the Proud. There is no pressing demand for the enactment of new laws, except in a clearly defined case, and to provide a needed reform. The demand for new laws represents a hysterical clamor for a victory of some kind over some ethereal opponent which often is merely a creature of the imagination. This is not altogether a new condition, for Montaigne tells us about the year 1533:

"I am further of the opinion that it would be better for us to have no laws at all than to have them in so prodigious number as we have."

Much of the legislation enacted, measured by the old and tried principles of the common law, must be denominated "freak legislation," and represents simply the shallow desire of some momentary statesman to do something startling, and thus bring himself for the hour into the limelight, and call forth from those who do not understand loud shouting and acclaim at the mention of his name. Freak legislators are soon forgotten, but the laws which they have placed upon the statute books are not always repealed. The law, like an orchard, should be trimmed and pruned continuously and intelligently to the end that all which is found to be barren and unfruitful, whether from having outlived its usefulness or because of the changed conditions, may be eliminated and not remain to the confusion of the law and the confounding of those whose duty it is to apply and enforce it. The law, like the orchard, may be wisely cultivated or permitted to run wild; whether cultivated or neglected it does bring forth. If not planted wisely then weeds spring up and bring forth after their kind.

There are annually produced by the legislative bodies of the several States of the Union in round numbers, 15,000 laws, of which a great majority are of strictly private nature or of special application. In many instances they are laws enacted for the purpose of taking a particular case out from under the operation of a general statute, thus being class legislation. There is too much tendency to legislate for the individual, and this in most instances directed toward the convenience or benefit of some person who is unwilling to take that which is allowed under the general law, and who has no difficulty in securing the introduction of a measure for his benefit by a member of the legislative body which must pass upon it. A certain fact may be proved, and the law applicable may be clear, yet the judge must, in applying