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of a large income are often scattered all over the Union, and the State which its fortunate possessor selects to reside in cannot tax them. To make the tax efficient the owner and his property should both be within the jurisdiction. State income taxes never have been successful, and the result of this decision is probably to release individual incomes from all effective taxation."

descendants to pay. Part of this debt will probably be in the shape of more fiat money, to plague rich and poor alike for a generation to come.

Moreover, in time of stress, it is most important that the nation may have recourse to taxes which will be both certain and elastic; in other words, to taxes which may be increased or diminished with some certainty as to the

Mr. Whitney then dicusses the consequences, amount of money which will thus be obtained. in part, thus:

"It is easy to make light of such a decision in times of peace, when we have immense revenues from customs duties to help us along. But shall we always be at peace? And can we count upon the customs duties in times of war? Many prominent men--senators, representatives, journalists and aspirants for high office-would like to see us plunge right off into a war with the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Let us assume that they succeed in getting us to do so. Let us assume that no other nation

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is dragged into the war against us; that no injury is done to our commerce by hostile fleets and that our customs duties therefore remain as productive as ever upon imports from neutral nations. Still we lose at once our revenue from the products of the British Empire, twofifths, say, of the custom-house receipts. Add to this deficit the expenses of the war, and we have the problem confronting the secretary of the treasury. How is the money to be got? It will be wanted quickly, not by any slow process of apportionment and valuation. Doubling the existing duties would be no safe reliance. As customs duties are raised, their product is apt to decline. Excises will of course multiply. Heavy duties will be laid on gross receipts from transportation, most of which, like our present duties and excises, will rest on the shoulders of the poor man. But will this suffice to make up the share which ought to be borne in such a war by the present generation ? That will be the problem. And as the Supreme Court has closed the door upon wealth, perhaps the nation will find its way out through another door opened by the same court. Perhaps it will pay its way by a new issuance of greenbacks. Because the wealth of the country cannot be taxed effectively, the impositions upon the poor man will be doubled, and an immense debt again established for his

This is the case with income-taxes. Great Britain, when it adds a penny in the pound to the tax, knows pretty nearly what additional revenue will come in. This is not the case with excises or customs duties, especially the latter. Increasing the duty on an imported article often means decreasing its importation. On the other hand, if the duty remains unchanged, or even is reduced, still its importation may decrease from decreased use or from growth of domestic manufactures.

"I have said that excises and customs duties rest on the shoulders of the poor man. I mean the man of moderate means, whose income is exhausted in the support of himself and his family in a moderate degree of comfort. Excises and customs duties come mainly from articles of general consumption. It is admitted by most statesmen and economists that they are mainly paid by the man whose income mostly goes out in obtaining such articles; and that this man of moderate means, when the revenue of the country is derived entirely from such taxes, pays far more than his share in proportion to his income. This is especially the case with what are called 'specific duties;' which, as John Stuart Mill said in England, are a flagrant injustice to the poorer class of contributors, unless compensated by the exist ence of other taxes from which, as from the present income tax, they are altogether exempt.' So Senator Sherman in 1870 said that the income tax of that day was 'the most just and equitable tax that is now levied by the United States of America, without an exception,' because it was the 'only discrimination in our tax-laws that will reach wealthy men as against the poorer classes of people,' who still 'necessarily pay nine-tenths of all the taxes.' This possibility of a balance between the poor and the rich is removed by the new constitutional interpretaton.

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merce, the legal-tender notes. They can inquire into the constitutionality of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. When some new socialistic law is wanted, they can demand a convenient constitutional power from their packed Supreme Court, as a Congressional majority looks to its speaker for a convenient parliamentary rule. Will wealth, for the present moment released from a small pecuniary assessment, profit or loss in the end by the new gospel of instability? It may be well for the wealthy reader, laying aside for an hour the newspaper which daily reflects his ideas, to think this question over by himself.

"There is another possible effect of this decision, worthy of grave consideration. I have already mentioned one point of similarity between the Federal Supreme Court and the British House of Lords. There is another. Both can be packed' if the other branches of the government wish a decision reversed. For this and other reasons it is of extreme importance that the Constitution should be regarded by the voters of the country as a thing fixed and immutable save by an amendment adopted by themselves, as a form of government which can indeed expand and adapt itself to new phases of civilization, but which is not subject to alteration according to the varying personality of any single body of men, however august. This is of especial moment as to those constitutional provisions which have a political aspect. Much of the reverence paid to Supreme Court decisions is due to the fact that, except in the damaging legal-tender cases, that court has, prior to the present year, so consistently followed the doctrine of stare decisis when ex-wise it differed from its predecessors only in pounding such provisions. The American people have been taught that the Constitution grows, but does not change, except when they themselves openly set to work to change it. The stability of our government has become the wonder of the world.

In conclusion Mr. Whitney says: "I find it hard to divest myself of a fear that the new principle, if it shall receive any further application, will open a new era for the court. The reasoning which segregates the nine judges of to-day from the nine judges of thirty years ago, which charges the present judges with the responsibility of reviewing the errors of their predecessors, destroys the continuity of the court in the public mind. The same reasoning segregates each individual judge from his eight associates, and properly places his individual portrait at the head of the column which sets forth his individual opinion or records his individual change of mind. But the public is not satisfied with an unlimited veto-power in any individual. If the court establishes the 'doctrine of change, the people, by adding new justices, can control and direct the movement. They can bring up again this question of the taxability of wealth. That, probably, is inevitable. They can bring up again the national bank, the control of com

"The Supreme Court decision did not turn upon any of the special objections raised to this particular income-tax. Hence a discussion of this tax, as distinguished from the ideal incometax, is not appropriate here. The exemptions were unusually great, owing to amendments secured from the Senate by associations claiming to be quasi-charitable in character. Other

details. The lowest income taxed was $4,000, that being assumed to be the upper limit of the incomes unfairly discriminated against by previous tariff and internal revenue taxation. The limit of the income-tax of 1870 was $2,000. That of the highest grade of the graduated income tax of 1864, discussed in Judge Spriger's case, was $10,000.

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The question whetheran in come-tax can properly be levied in time of peace is one that cannot be decided by a court. Congress is the judge of the necessity, at any given time, for any tax which can be levied at all. Our ancestors made many promises, when they were trying to secure the ratification of the Constitution, as to the rarity with which direct taxation would be imposed. As soon as they began work, however, they admitted that it was a subject as to which policy must be the only guide. Any tax levied may properly be called a wartax so long as the treasury is struggling with an immense annual deficit, where, but for pensions to veterans of the civil war, we should have an annual surplus of double the amount."

We publish in this issue of the LAW JOURNAL, an article on "Legal Education and Admission to the Bar," by George Wharton Pep

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per. This article was read at the first annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, at Bedford Springs, on the 10th day of July, 1895. The meeting was one of the most successful State Bar Association gatherings of lawyers which has been recorded, and the papers read at the meeting were all of special merit and value. Mr. Pepper is one of the leading lawyers of Philadephia, and though a young man, has already been recognized as a lawyer of brilliant attainments and well read in his profession. He is a lecturer at the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania, editor of the American Law Register and Review, and has a large practice in the Quaker City. The way in which Mr. Pepper has handled his subject gives a slight idea of his ability, while his thorough knowledge of the subject of legal education gives the article a prestige which few authors could attain.

LEGAL EDUCATION AND ADMISSION TO THE BAR.

A paper read before the Pennsylvania Bar Association at its First Annual Convention at Bedford Springs, Pa., by George Wharton Pepper, of Philadelphia.

Ralph Stone, Esq., of Michigan, recently read a most interesting paper before the New York State Bar Association on "The Mission of State Bar Associations." The address was a thoughtful one and it is a significant fact in connection with it that the author considers the primary mission of a bar association to be in the field of legal education. 'There is," said Mr. Stone, "no legal problem before the lawyers of this country to-day that should receive more attention than this. On its solution depends the future, first of American jurisprudence, and, second, in a very great degree, of the social and business and commercial interests of the people, since lawyers, of necessity, influence legislation more than any other class." It is, therefore, peculiarly fitting that the Pennsylvania Bar Association, in its first annual gathering assembled, should devote at least a portion of its time to the consideration of certain problems in legal education and certain practical questions with respect to the standard of preparation required of candidates

for admission to the bar.

With this end in view, I propose first, to say a few words in regard to methods of legal study which have prevailed in the past and to consider how far, if at all, the conditions of legal study have changed in our own time; second, to review the efforts that 1 See LII Legal Intelligencer, p. 185.

are being made throughout the country and in this commonwealth to accommodate legal instruction to existing conditions; and third, to suggest certain practical considerations with respect to legal study ciation to that important subject. in Pennsylvania and the relation of the Bar Asso

I. In referring to methods of legal study which have prevailed in the past, I have no intention of rehearsing in your hearing the now familiar story of the growth of the English system of studying law and of the rise of the Inns of Chanceries and of the Inns of Court. I suppose that this story will always represent to the English-speaking lawyer the

romance of the history of the law. It is in connection with these "noblest nurseries of humanity and

liberty" that our imaginations like to picture the legal giants of the past, fitting themselves by a long and arduous course of preliminary training for the mighty legal feats which they were destined thereafter to accomplish in a wider arena. Many a pen has traced the quaint and pleasing picture. By no one has the outline of the story been more gracefully given than by one of the officers of this Bar Association, Samnel Dickson, Esq., in his address on "The Methods of Legal Education," delivered four years ago before the Law School of the University of Pennsyvania. He there describes that sanctum sanctorum-the Middle and Inner Temple, about which literary, as well as professional associations, are thickly clustered. He reminds us of the worthies who there gained their first acquaintance with the common law, and especially of Blackstone, who wrote part of his Commentaries at No. 2 Brick Court, "in spite," as Mr. Dickson puts it, "of the noise made overhead by Goldsmith and his friends, who played blind man's buff before supper and wound up with dancing." Our purpose is more strictly a practical one and, therefore, we cannot permit our minds to dwell long upon the pictures which such descriptions call before the inward eye. To us, however, it will always be an interesting and significant fact that the learning of the Temple and the inspiration which must have come from work done amidst such surroundings has found its way in direct line of descent into the very midst of our own commonwealth, in virtue of the circumstance that many of those Pennsylvania lawyers whose names we most revere received their legal education in the Inns of Court, and studied at the feet of the Gamaliels who adorned the English bench in the last century.1

When I speak of methods of education that have prevailed in the past, I have in mind a much more

The Bar is familiar with the "History of the Antiquities of Inns of Court, first published in 1790. The latest work on this subject is Loftie's "Inns of Court." London: 1895.

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sumed in attention to office work is so great that
the preceptor has little or no time to devote to the
serious task of instruction; and, so far as the pre-
ceptor himself is concerned, the student derives no
benefit from working within the sphere of his influ-
ence. The introduction of modern business
methods into the law office and the general employ-
ment of stenographers and typewriters has put upon
other shoulders tasks which formerly fell to the stu-
dent's share; and as far as the work of running the
office and administering its business is concerned,
the student has, in most instances, become the fifth
wheel of the conveyance. In the city of Philadel-
phia the offices where careful and systematic in-
struction is given to the student by responsible per-
sons may be counted upon one's fingers. I use the
" in view of the
expression "responsible persons
fact that in some offices where the system nominally
survives, the duty of quizzing is wholly delegated
to clerks or assistants of very moderate intellectual

recent past than that to which I have just adverted.
I refer to the office system of instruction which
(having its counterpart in the mother country and
in sister States) once represented the only road
along which students of the law could travel. To
some extent, perhaps, the system still exists in
Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but the changes that
have taken place in the administration of the ordi-
nary law office and the rise of the modern law
school seem to indicate that the system is obsoles-
cent-if not altogether obsolete. I can readily
imagine that there are many among you who ques-
tion the accuracy of the statement just made.
They would, doubtless, seek to contradict it by
pointing to the hundreds and hundreds of students
registered in the offices of practicing members of
the bar throughout this great commonwealth at the
present time, the head of the office being their pre-
ceptor of record and charged (in name at least)
with the responsibility of directing their studies.
In referring to the system of office instruction, how-ability and of very slight legal attainment. There
ever, I had in mind a relation between preceptor
and student which is not merely nominal but real.
I am aware that the custom of office registration is
still general, and that there are many portions of
the commonwealth in which it may be said to be
universal. In the old days, however, there was an
almost feudal relationship between the law-lord and
student. The preceptor actually mapped out the
course of study and actually supervised the reading fast becoming, a thing of the past. I do not mean
of the student. Regular quizzes were given and
given frequently. There was constant intercourse
in those days between the head of the office and
the merest tyro who was opening his Blackstone for

the first time. In return for this instruction and
guidance, the student performed services of real
value to his preceptor. Before stenography was
common, before the typewriter was invented, and
before printing was as commonly resorted to as it is
now in the preparation of legal documents and

briefs of various sorts, the student did the writing
of the office, copied letters, wrote briefs, prepared
pleadings and, in many instances, drew deeds of
conveyance and other title papers. An intelligent
attention to this routine office work resulted in
giving to the student a training in the principles
and practice of his chosen profession which, when
tested by its results, unquestionably supplied the
bar with a body of trained and competent lawyers.
But, to-day, the mere fact that numbers of stu-
dents are registered in numbers of offices through-
out the commonwealth is a fact which, in itself,
gives us little or no information about the alleged
decadence of the system of instruction which I
have outlined. The true state of the case, as I un-
derstand it, is that in the average modern law office,
whether in great city or smaller town, the time con-

are many cases in my personal knowledge in which the student, during the three years of his tutelage, never once came in contact with his nominal preceptor in regard to legal matters; and the relation between them (excepting in so far as it existed on paper) consisted in the exchange of conventional greetings.

Upon the whole, therefore, I have ventured to assert that the office system of instruction is, or is

to assert that it has been abandoned because it was inefficient. In many respects it was a better system however, is that a change of conditions has made than any which compete for its place. My belief, its continuance a practical impossibility. Its revival, therefore, need not be discussed. If the circumstances under which the modern lawyer practices his profession have led to the decay of the office system, any effort to reinstate it must fail untask of effecting a radical modification of modern less we are prepared to undertake the very serious

professional methods.

I venture to suggest, also, the thought that the rapid growth and development of the law during the last half century and the multiplication of new fields within which legal principles must be applied, have led to a demand for a system of instruction more comprehensive in its scope than that which was given under the older system. In the old days the student read his Blackstone and Kent and grappled with Coke upon Littleton and Fearne on remainders. Sometimes Story's text-books on Equity and Contracts were put in his hands, but the office quizzes as a rule were confined to the law of property and to the intricacies of practice and pleading at law. Blackstone's single chapter on Corpora

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tions was thought to be a sufficient treatment of that branch of the law for the student's purpose, and the great commentator's summary of the law of contracts in another chapter, represented the extent to which it was thought desirable that the student should dip into that particular fountain of learning. The separate study of torts as a body of law was not then common. Special developments of the law of contracts-such as insurance, bills and notes, partnership, the contracts of carriers and the like, were not specifically included in the student's curriculum. Constitutional law was taught in its elements; but constitutional law, when the office system was at its height, was a body of law far less formidable in its bulk (although perhaps its outlines were no less grand and imposing) than the constitutional law which we know to-day. A laudator temporis acti would, perhaps, sum up the situation by saying that in the old days it was a case, not of many things, but of much. In a sense this is true. A few things were taught, but they were taught thoroughly and well. At the same time the stage of development which the law had reached made it possible to disregard the many things for the few, without leaving a serious gap or hiatus in the student's preparation. One or two quizzes a week enabled the preceptor to give to his students all the guidance that was necessary, and the narrow range of subjects made it possible to conduct an exhaustive examination into the underlying principles of the subjects of study. I think it may safely be said under the conditions that prevail today that, in the vast majority of cases, so meagre a supervision of the preparatory work as is represented by two or three quizzes a week will result in bringing to the bar students whose preparation has been fragmentary and lacking in symmetry and proportion, in the sense that their familiarity with a given subject of fundamental importance is greater or less as the case may be than their familiarity with another subject of equal importance. What they have learned as the result of their own unaided efforts, they have learned after wasting a great deal of time in floundering about in mire from which a helping hand might readily have extracted them. Whole fields of law åre terra incognita to students who complete their studies (if the word complete can be used in such connection) without the advantage of intelligent advice in mapping out a course of study and constant assistance in prosecuting it. I know that there are many who will reply that a student's legal education begins only upon admission to the bar, and that, for practical purposes, it makes little difference whether or not he is wholly ignorant of the laws of the commonwealth at the time he takes his oath to support them. This proposition would probably not be seriously maintained

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by any intelligent person in all its baldness; for if it were, the logical conclusion would be that preparatory study and examinations for admission to the bar might be forthwith abolished, and that the only requirement insisted upon as a condition of entering upon the practice of the law should be (in imitation of the rule prevailing in many of the Western States), the possession of a good moral character and an unlimited amount of assurance. Probably the real view of many of those who make this extreme assertion is merely that preliminary study should be aimed primarily at the acquisition of a knowledge of legal principles in their application to legal problems of ordinary occurrence, and that the student should not be expected to be possessed of extensive and minute information upon a great variety of legal subjects. In other words, they but echo the exclamation of Lord Coke: "God

forbid that counsel should know the whole law." While uniting in this pious ejaculation, we must not forget that sooner or later legal knowledge must be acquired by study and not by attrition, and that there are vast domains of legal knowledge which may profitably be explored otherwise than in connection with active practice. It should seem, there

fore, to be the part of wisdom so to utilize the three years set apart under our system for legal study as to enable the student to gain a maximum knowledge of legal principles, and to explore as many important fields as possible before the distractions of active work begin. In other words, it surely cannot be seriously disputed that it is an advantage to come to the bar with a large stock of previously acquired legal knowledge; although it should seem that even this proposition would be denied by those who advocate the extreme view above adverted to. Of course, a student cannot master the whole law. Under our system of jurisprudence it is even doubtful if such a result can be accomplished in a lifetime.* But the conclusion from this consideration is merely that we have before us a problem of selection as to what the student shall study and a problem of method as to how he shall do it. This is another way of saying, so far as the problem of selection is concerned, that it is necessary to determine what we mean by the proposition referred to a moment ago, that the student of law should familiarize himself with the application of legal principles to problems of "ordinary occurrence. What are the problems of "ordinary occurrence" in the practice of the modern lawyer? To answer this question careful observation and much thought are undoubtedly necessary. It is, to say the least, just as important that the student who comes to the bar to-day should know (for example) what is meant

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Ihring, cited by Committee of Am. Bar Assoc., p. 835 of Vol. XIV of reports.

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