by
which to judge of the intelligence and virtue of our race.

Truly it has been said: "With the coming of the lawyer came a new
power in the world. The steel-clad baron and his retainers were
awed by terms they had never before heard and did not understand, such
as precedent, principle, and the like. The great and real pacifier
of the world was the lawyer. His parchment took the place of
the battle-field. The flow of his ink checked the flow of blood.
His quill usurped the place of the sword. His legalism dethroned
barbarism. His victories were victories of peace. He impressed
on individuals and on communities that which he is now endeavoring
to impress on nations, that there are many controversies that it
were better to lose by arbitration than to win by war and
bloodshed."

It is all-important, never more so than now, that the people should
magnify the law. Whatever lessens respect for its authority bodes
evil and only evil to the State. No occasion could arise more
appropriate than this in which to utter solemn words of warning
against an evil of greater menace to the public weal than aught to
be apprehended from foreign foe. In many localities a spirit of
lawlessness has asserted itself in its most hideous form. The rule
of the mob has at times usurped that of the law. Outrages have
been perpetrated in the name of summary justice, appalling to
all thoughtful men. It need hardly be said that all this is in
total disregard of individual rights, and utterly subversive of
all lawful authority.

By the solemn adjudication of courts, and under the safeguards
of law, the fact of guilt is to be established, and the guilty
punished. The spirit of the mob is in deadly antagonism to all
constituted authority. Unless curbed it will sap the foundation
of civilized society. Lynching a human creature is no less murder
when the act of a mob than when that of a single individual. There
is no safety to society but in an aroused public sentiment that
will hold each participant amenable to the law for the consequences
of the crime he either perpetrates or abets. This is the land
of liberty, "of the largest liberty," but let it never be forgotten
that it is liberty regulated by law. Let him be accounted a public
enemy who would weaken the bonds of human society, and destroy what
it has cost our race the sacrifice and toil of centuries to achieve.

The sure rock of defence in the outstretched years as in the