be because the people, the great, common people say, in a voice which the politician who hears will tremble at and hasten to obey, that they want that complete and con stant control over the laws by which they are governed, which the Initiative and Referendum give; and because they, the people, practice this fullest form of popular government, of self-government.
Then will be tapped those now hidden reservoirs of faith and hope and love in the hearts of the masses, and they will flow for the purification of the classes who are the degrading and corrupting element in our organic life, till in the words of Tennyson: "There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in uni versal law."
CHARLES LAMB AND THE LAW. I WAS born and passed the first seven years of my life in the Temple." With this simple preface " the best loved of Eng lish writers," as Mr. Swinburne calls Charles Lamb, begins his famous essay on " The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." Lamb was a true child of the Temple. He considered it " the most elegant spot in the metropolis." He loved its " magnificent ample squares, its classic green recesses," and within its pre cincts he spent twenty-three years altogether, undoubtedly the happiest years of his life. Lamb must ever be an interesting figure to lawyers, not only because of his life-long connection with the Temple, but also because many of his best friends and closest asso ciates were members of the legal profession. It was at No. 2, Crown Office row — "cheerful Crown Office row"— that Charles Lamb first saw the light. One is glad to find that the place of his " kindly engendure" remains unchanged. No. 2 is at the east end of Crown Office row, the end which bears the date 1737, and it was in one of the two rear rooms of the ground floor that Charles Lamb was born. In one respect Lamb would now find a change. The windows at the rear of Crown Office row used to look out upon Inner Temple lane, and, of course, they no longer do so, owing to the fact that the view is intercepted by the
buildings of the new hall. Lamb was born on the tenth of February, 1775, and on the tenth of March he was baptized at the Temple Church by the Rev. Mr. Jeffs. Lamb's father was clerk to Samuel Salt, the old bencher described in the essay above referred to, and appears under the name of " Lovel" in the same essay. John Lamb, senior, was evidently a superior sort of barrister's clerk. He was a man of " incorrigible and losing honesty, and ' would strike.' " Not only that, but much of the credit which Salt re ceived was by right due to his clerk. " When a case of difficult disposition of money, tes tamentary or otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over with a few instruc tions to his man Lovel, who was a quick little fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural understanding, of which he had an uncommon share." "Some barristers' clerks," writes Mr. Augus tine Birrell, wittily, " make fortunes for them selves; others only tea for their masters." Although John Lamb was not an ordinary "tea-making " clerk, it is certain he did not make a fortune either, for on Samuel Salt's death, in 1792, the Lambs left the Temple and went to live in comparative poverty in Little Queen street, Holborn, wnere, not long afterwards, John Lamb died. But we anticipate. The first seven years of
