Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/102

 The Editor's Bag not, in an scholarly sense, a student at all," yet as an advocate he rose far above mediocrity and could be consid ered successful. As an example to his colleagues, he anticipated, perhaps fore saw, the general adoption of a better code of ethics, as when he advised: — Discourage litigation. Persuade your neigh bors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often the real loser—in fees, expenses, and waste of time. Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this. A moral tone ought to be infused into the profession which should drive such men out of it. MR. ROOT'S PREPARATION FOR THE SENATE A distinguished writer upon juris prudence has somewhere remarked that a lawyer learned in the com mon law may be totally unfit to grapple with the problems of statute law, as a member of a legislative body. Senator-Elect Elihu Root, in his speech to the New York Legislature January 28, said that he did not think that "as a rule lawyers who have been many years at the bar and whose habits have become fixed, ordinarily make very good legislators, when they are not caught young." But if we are not much mistaken, Mr. Root's assumption and that of the learned writer are incorrect. In view of the intimate and vital relation be tween unwritten and written law, and the dependence of the latter upon the former, it at least ought to be true that a man is the better legislator for being a sound lawyer. At all events, in Mr. Root's own case, no one can doubt for a moment that he will be better fitted than the majority of his colleagues in the Senate to face those new problems, which, as he says, "continually presenting themselves, are taxing the best thought

85

of the most experienced public servants." For few of our national legislators have united in so rare a combination the wisdom of the statesman and of the lawyer, as has "this convinced and uncompromising nationalist of the school of Alexander Hamilton." Few have brought to their duties the same pro found insight into constitutional law as that of this rare man, who declares:— I believe in the exercise of the executive, the legislative, and the judicial powers of the national government to the full limit of the constitutional grants as those grants were construed by John Marshall and would be construed by him today. But I believe that the founders of the Republic builded more wisely than they knew when they set the limits between the exercise of that national power and the exercise of the local powers by the states. The retirement of Mr. Root from the Cabinet and his entrance into the Senate will by no means result in a lessening of his influence and usefulness. On the contrary, there is already some indica tion of greater frankness in his discussion of public matters upon which a cabinet officer might hesitate to pronounce his opinion. He does not hesitate to de clare himself in favor of a parcels post, or to discuss numerous problems of public interest. His outspoken but delicate reference to a somewhat sore subject lately vexing some citizens, that of the interference of one particular state in our international relations, as subsequent events have proved, was not less timely than forceful. He said: — The men who are found opposing the maintenance of the authority of the treaty provisions of the United States made under the express grant of power in the Constitution are apt to be the very men who are anxious to have the Government come into their states and spend no end of money in doing the things that the states ought to do themselves in the exercise of their own powers. But the invitation of the national government to as