the opportunity they have lost and the duty they owe their profession by its support.

As the science of the law is but the knowledge of how most expediently to live, so our profession touches life on more points than either medicine or theology, which, together with the law have been known hitherto as the learned professions. And, therefore, a law library is the least technical of all technical libraries. It appeals not merely to lawyers, but to all classes of thinkers and students outside of the profession itself, more than does any other merely scientific collection of books. Here the poet, the romancer and the playwright can range over the widest scope of the emotions; passion, love, hatred, tenderness and revenge. The myriad phases of untamed humanity can here be studied, not in the figments of, it may be, a distempered intellect, but as they have actually revealed themselves in the thousand instances of crime and weakness. What novels of Gaboriau, Poe or Conan Doyle can vie in intrigue, machinery of detection, in subtle manifestations of intellectual acuteness and mystery, with the realities contained in the hundreds of separate trials, celebrated and infamous, of all kinds, the exhibitions of the criminal intellect stored on these shelves? Here also can the historian and the sociologist with certainty gather the consecutive courses of events, customs, manners and modes of living which went to make up the state of the people he is describing or studying. From the legislation of a community more surely can the life, habits, thoughts, quic quid agunt homines of that community be described, than from the newspapers, broadsides and ballads recommended by Macaulay, to him who is painting the pictures of the past. From a perusal of the statutes of de donis and quia emptores, the legal Owen can here reconstruct, not merely the skeleton, but the living, breathing form and body of the feudal ages. He can note the struggles between the landowner and those who sought to be landowners; the efforts on the one hand to avoid, and on the other to impose additional obligations, and the devices of the real estate lawyers of those days to obtain title from unwilling

lords. What pictures of ecclesiastical greed and tyranny and popular superstition are not limned for us in the statutes of mortmain and uses? And when the future historian of our own times shall seek to delineate our features, where can he find a more accurate picture of the rise and growth of that controlling manifestation of the present age, the spirit of organization and the desire to avoid individual responsibility, than in the enthronement and protection of that incipient form of socialism, corporate power, which is so marked a feature of modern legislation? On these shelves, too, the inventor and engineer will find that which may save him from the despair of futile and wasted effort. In short, a law library is not merely a collection of books for the use of lawyers only, but should be a reservoir from which all thinkers, students and mere readers can drink not knowledge only, but pleasure and entertainment. The State, the municipality, the whole community, and especially our profession, may well be proud of what the Law Association has here created, and should strengthen the hands of those who, unaided and not overburdened with wealth, have furnished so important a contribution to knowledge.

It must be conceded, I think, that the profession of the law does not occupy so influential a position in the community to-day as it did in the early part of, and down to the middle of this century. In looking for the causes of this decline in power of our profession, the immense growth and importance of applied, as well as abstract, science cannot be overlooked. It is no longer true that law, medicine and theology are the only learned professions. Modern science, in all its varied branches, triumphantly asserts its title to be included in this list. The never-ending charm, the perennial delight of an intimate acquaintance with nature, with the forces and secrets of matter, and the glory and wealth which have come to those who have subjugated them to the uses of men, have attracted to their study many of those abler minds, that, in the pre-scientific period would have naturally gravitated to the law.

The greatest thinkers of to-day are peering with intense curiosity into, and struggling, with all the might of unsatisfied desire, to extort from nature, and subdue to our use, its secrets and might. These are now some of the sources of power in man over his fellows, and as such attract the capable, the intellectual and the ambitious. Electricians, engineers, metallurgists, meteorologists, chemists, microscopists, all constitute learned professions which employ the highest grade of intellect, and whose successes bring a reputation and a power as much, if not more, widely extended than the most brilliant forensic or even judicial career.

While this is the case, however, the profession of the law will, from its immediate and direct action on the conduct of men, always retain among its followers a large share of the intellectual force of the community. To retain its influence and to continue it as it has hitherto been in this country, the leading profession, guiding and directing public opinion, can only be effected by maintaining and preserving that high tone and lofty sentiment of personal conduct which has hitherto characterized it. It is in its capacity to resist what Lord Justice James was wont to style, "the commercial conscience," and what a learned judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has, in a very recent opinion,* stigmatized as "the low level of business morality," that its past power has accrued and its future influence depends. This moral stamina inevitably engendered by our studies, and the confidential character of our avocation, is vitalized and reinforced by our Association. Therefore it is that The Law Association should be, in some sort, a mint, wherein is stricken the stamp of every lawyer's relation to his profession. To belong to it should be to be recognized as a certificate of character. He should require no other endorsement. Every fit member of our bar should feel that unless he can write after his name "Member of the Law Association of Philadelphia," his professional status is still uncertain, for he is not assisting to his utmost to do that which should be his greatest effort, to uphold the honor and character of the Bar of Philadelphia.

Edelman vs. Latshaw, 180 Pa., 419.

CHARTER

of the

LAW LIBRARY COMPANY

OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA

TO ALL MEN to whom these Presents shall come Greeting, Know Ye, that We whose names are hereunto subscribed of the City of Philadelphia, Attornies and Counsellors at Law, being desirous of establishing a Law Library Company within the said City and for that purpose of acquiring and enjoying the powers and immunities of a Corporation or body politic in law, according to an Act of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania intituled "An Act to confer on certain associations of the Citizens of this Commonwealth the powers and immunities of Corporations or bodies politic in law," We do therefore by these Presents publish and declare that we have associated and do hereby associate ourselves together for the said purposes by the name style and title of "The Law Library Company of the City of Philadelphia" under the Articles and Conditions following, to wit.

1. The said subscribers and their successors shall according to the said above recited Act become and be a Corporation or body politic in law and in fact to have continuance by the name, style and title of "The Law Library Company of the City of Philadelphia," and as such shall have full power and authority to make, have and use one common Seal with such device and inscription as they shall deem proper, and the same to break alter or renew at their pleasure, and by the name, style and title, aforesaid be able and capable in law to sue and be sued, plead and be impleaded in any Court or Courts before any Judge or Judges, Justice or Justices, in all manner of suits, complaints, pleas causes matters and demands whatsoever; and all and every matter or thing therein to do, in as full

and effectual a manner as any other person or persons bodies politic and corporate within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, may or can do; and shall be authorized and empowered to make rules, Bye Laws, and Ordinances, and to do everything needful for the good government and support of the affairs of the said Company: Provided that the said Bye Laws, rules and Ordinances, or any of them be not repugnant to the Constitution and laws of the United States, to the Constitution and laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or to the present instrument upon which the said Company is founded and established: And provided also that none of the said Bye Laws, rules and Ordinances shall extend to a dissolution of the said Company or give power to dissolve the same except by the consent of all the members thereof.

2. The said Company and their successors by the name style and title aforesaid shall be able and capable in law according to the terms and conditions of these presents to take receive and hold all and all manner of lands, tenements, rents, annuities, franchises, and hereditaments and any sum and sums of Money, and any manner and portion of Goods and Chattels, given and bequeathed unto them, to be employed and disposed of according to the objects, articles and conditions, of this instrument, the Bye Laws of the said Company or of the Will and intention of the Donor: Provided, that the clear yearly value or income of the messuages, houses, lands and tenements, rents, annuities, or other hereditaments and real Estate of the said Company, and the interest of the Money by them lent, shall not exceed the sum of Five hundred pounds.

3.-The Stock of the said Company shall be divided into shares, and for each share there shall be paid by the members respectively, the sum of Twenty Dollars, one-half thereof as soon as the Company is incorporated, and the residue when required. After the Company is incorporated Gentlemen of the Bar of Pennsylvania may be admitted as new members on such terms and Conditions as the Bye Laws shall from