The Green Bag
94 [Hon. David ]. Brewer----Continued.]
imagine, so they who undertake it will have need of the strength of purpose that does not tire.
Hon. Walter Clark, Chief justice of North
Carolina:— You are proposing to do for this country what Justinian did for Rome and Napoleon for Western Europe.
It is, for many reasons
a far greater work and more difficult. Of its value and of its necessity, there can be no two opinions. Fame and fortune will wait upon those who shall confer such a boon upon the present and future millions of our country.
Hon. Hampton L. Carson, Attorney- General of
Pennsylvania,
1903-7; Historian
of
the
Supreme Court of the United States and of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania; formerly Professor of Law in the University of Penn syl'vania:-—— I have read with care the "Memorandum in re Corpus juris" which you sent me, and also
the letters of the distinguished lawyers commenting upon it. I can truly say that I have read nothing upon professional needs within the last ten years which appeals to me so strongly. You have briefly but forcibly expressed the difficulties of a situation con fronting the profession in a manner which must challenge general attention; and you have done what is of far greater importance solved the difiiculty of meeting that situation by a rational and practicable plan. I have adventured in legal studies upon three dis tinct lines, first, as an active practitioner; next, as a teacher of law students, through
my professorship in the University Law Depart ment, and then, too, in historic studies of the
development of legal principles, and from all three lines of work there has been borne in upon me the conviction that the profession was in danger of being submerged, not only by the mass, but by the conflicting waves of decisions, and was in sore need of a general chart as the sole means of enabling latitude and longitude to be accurately taken. The various efforts of the encyclopadias, important though they were, and in the main intelligently conducted, formed no satisfactory solution of the difiiculty; for apart from the purely arbitrary and unphilosophical arrange ment of matter,
the text
of
the various
articles themselves was built simply upon the plan of endeavoring to embody the most recent decisions, because of some peculiarity of fact and novelty of doctrine, and thus in
the main drifted away from the statement of general principles, in order to aid a practi tioner in finding citations which might fit particular cases. The merit of your plan I conceive to be this: Imagine, if such a thing be conceivable, the
non-existence in any manner, shape or form of a map of the United States, but the exis
tence of numberless county maps of every state in the Union. Fancy the confusion of mind of a student of American geography, who would be compelled in order to ascertain the general relationships of states, territories, rivers and mountain ranges and lakes to each other, if he were obliged to attempt to con struct for himself ab origine a general map by placing side by side the county maps of each distinct state, without having any guide whatever as to what lay north or south or east or west of each other. It would be a picture puzzle game in the extremest sense. You propose, however, that there shall be undertaken by competent experts the prepara tion of a general chart which will do this work for the general practitioner and student and thus extricate him from the maze. Greater work than this cannot be attempted, and
greater service to the profession and to the public cannot be done. I heartily approve of the plan, and wish you all success in its
accomplishment. You are entirely right in pointing out the dangers and endeavoring to rise above the evils of commercialism. The plan could not succeed if undertaken from the commer cial point of view. It would have too many competitors, and too many enemies, and would perish for lack of subsistence. No one, save
he who has had some experience in such matters, can appreciate the difficulties and the delays of attempting to convince busy lawyers that the tools with which they are in the habit of working are uncouth and antiquated, that they should be thrown aside, and new methods
adopted. The only way to supplant the old methods is to fashion a new instrument, and make it practicable, and place it, ready for use, in the hands of the profession. This can only be undertaken by those who would yield themselves entirely to the task of fashioning a new weapon, and the capital necessary for such a method or establishment, so to speak. must be supplied in bulk at one time, and ready
