to victory troops whose courage has been and forever will be unquestioned. For four long and weary years they followed the destinies of the Southern Cross, and there sleeps in hallowed sleep today on almost every battlefield members of our Bar whose names are covered with undying glory and whose deeds are marked with heroic bravery which is the greatest heritage that can descend to a free and mighty people.

Where lawyers are we find peace and prosperity. It is a mistaken idea to believe that a lawyer is an emblem of strife. No lawyer who is true to his profession, to his conscience and to his client ever stirred up strife, but on the contrary his mission in this world is to put down discord. This may sound paradoxical to the laity. The light which the lawyer holds in his hands and which guides his feet is the "gladsome light of Jurisprudence," and he knows, as knows every man of worldly experience, that when Lord Chatham said, "Where law ends, tyranny begins," he spoke an everlasting truth.

You are prosperous because people need you in the affairs of life. Your honesty in the past is the "open sesame" of the future.

People have come to you and cast their treasures to your keeping, placed their honor in your hands, nay, even more, they have entrusted to you their lives when the stern law of nature demanded as of old "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," and in place of executing such a law, you have tempered your judgment with mercy and weighed out the offender in the scales of justice a portion equal to his offense. Today what State has greater lawyers than North Carolina? They are, indeed, the flower of the Bar.

We are proud of our present State and Federal Judiciary, proud of the things they have achieved, and the manner in which it has been accomplished. The right of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in North Carolina is guaranteed to every man, woman and child, and we thank God today that every man can worship Him "according to the dictates of his own conscience," a right given us by our Federal Constitution.

No nation or no man ever achieved much without the aid

and assistance of lawyers. All the great instruments of the world from Magna Charta down to the present day were drawn by them. By them came freedom of speech, by them came freedom of the press, by them came religious liberty, and it is to them that the freedom of mankind, and peace and good will on earth is attributable.

And now lastly I welcome you in the name of this Southland of ours, because Southern Lawyers and Southern men are so greatly interwoven with the history of these United States that were you to blot out their works it would leave our country almost destitute. You would blot out the great Declaration of Independence, the greatest instrument ever conceived by the brain of mortal man, and yet it was penned by a Southern hand, declaring with Southern spirit, "that all men were created equal," and recognizing every man to be a sovereign. You would blot out a great part of the Constitution of the United States, that great instrument guaranteeing as it does the liberties of the people. You would blot out the name of Washington, the Father of his Country, and leave this nation fatherless. You would blot out the great Monroe Doctrine which has said to the nations of the East "thus far shalt thou go and no further." You would blot out Abraham Lincoln, who was born in Kentucky, who with one stroke of the pen released the shackles of four million slaves. You would blot out the memories of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, whose deathless names will go on forever resounding down the Halls of Eternity. The Confederacy is dead, and we can all say together that

"No nation rose so pure and white,

None fell so free from crime."

It was their nation, it was ours. We remember it as a beautiful dream, we hallow it as a fond recollection. The stars and stripes have replaced the stars and bars. They are here, and they are here to stay. It has been sealed to us by some of the best of North Carolina's blood, for it has been the winding sheet of such heroes as Bagley and Shipp, and beneath its ample folds I again extend to you a most joyous welcome.

One more word to you fair ladies. Your presence will add more to the pleasure and enjoyment of this occasion than that of your distinguished husbands and sweethearts. We thank you for that presence. An occasion like this without the presence of ladies, is like a beautiful ring with the diamond missing, for no diamond ever shone more beautiful, or with greater lustre, than the vivacious eyes of an American

woman.

REMARKS BY MR. THOS. S. KENAN, PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION.

Gentlemen of the Bar Association:

I congratulate you in assembling on the shores of beautiful Lake Toxaway at this the Seventh Annual Session of the Association, and thank these good ladies for their charming presence; for their aid and encouragement are regarded as essential to the promotion of any laudable undertaking.

Article eleven of your Constitution makes it obligatory upon the President to deliver an address, but he is allowed the privilege of selecting its subject. Assuming the right to place a liberal construction on this article, I have ventured to depart from the general custom in that I have not confined myself to any particular subject.

After completing the course of study at Judge Pearson's Law School, I was licensed to practice law in the County Courts in December, 1858, and in the Superior Courts in December, 1859. I recall the names of but few members of this body who antedate me.

The ancient procedure of the Common Law and the old system of pleading and practice were then in vogue, but they have been swept away by a blizzard of reform. I opened a law office in Kenansville, Duplin county, in 1860, and the first suit in which I was employed was upon a note for the recovery of a considerable sum of money. The defendant was brought into court by due process, and when I saw upon the docket that the demand of the plaintiff was met by an entry of "Payment; setoff; accord and satisfaction; stat. lim., with leave to add," which meant any other plea in defense, as nil debet or non est factum, I was riotously inclined to enter a nol pros., leave the court house, abandon the practice and engage in other business. However, upon being informed by older lawyers that these pleas were merely formal, my fears were dissipated and the suit was prosecuted to judg ment. When the money was collected I gave a receipt to the officer for the amount, as attorney of the plaintiff, mounted