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The Green Bag
velous as the capacities of its dialect, as the eloquence by which its masses were regaled, and swayed this way and that as clouds, as waves — marvelous as the long banquet of beauty in which they reveled — as their love of Athens and their passion of glory. There was no one day in the whole public life of Demos thenes when the fortune, the good name, the civil existence of any considerable man was safer there than it would have been at Constantinople or Cairo under the very worst form of Turkish rule. There was a sycophant to accuse, a demagogue to prosecute, a fickle, selfish, necessitous court — no court at all, only a commission of some hundreds or thousands from the public assembly sit ting in the sunshine, directly interested in the cause — to pronounce judgment. And he who rose rich and honored might be flying at night for life to some Persian or Macedonian outpost to die by poison on his way in the Temple of Neptune." Let the American citizen, if any here there be who is giving ear to the sugges tion that we should adopt the "recall" for judges, look on this picture of a de based judiciary, and the consequences which resulted from placing the admin istration of justice in incompetent hands
— this picture limned by the master hand of a great American lawyer of fifty years ago — and it may give him pause. Perhaps there may be some other way of remedying these conditions, which I have thus faintly outlined, and I should be only too well pleased if what I have so imperfectly said this morning should cause some true lover of our noble pro fession to reveal to us that way. For myself, so far as I can now see, what we should strive for is the estab lishment of a system which will develop out of the ranks of the profession a class of men who will be willing to forego the great emoluments which sometimes result from the successful conduct of the strictly business side of the law, in order that they may devote themselves to the more efficient discharge of its duties as an aid in the administration of justice in the courts. If it shall appear to any that this hope is chimerical, all I have to say is this: There are still in the ranks of the legal profession men who would rather have a moderate income coupled with the fame of a great lawyer than the larger emoluments which go with the reputation of a great financier. And I believe that the future standing of the bar in America will depend upon its ability to develop such a class.
The Duty of the Lawyer as an Officer of the Court1 BY CHRISTIAN DOERFLER IT now devolves upon me, as Presi dent of this Association, to deliver the annual address. Ordinarily, this 1 Taken from the President's Annual Address de livered last December before the Milwaukee County Bar Association.
address consists of a review of the various events that have transpired in relation to the Association during the past year, with recommendations by the President for the benefit of the Associa tion in the future. The reports of the
