State Bar Examiners, founded upon their experience in that office, and there can be none better qualified than they to form a correct judgment upon that question.

As to the three-year law course, that is already the plan of the Law Schools in this State, though they have permitted it to be completed in two years.

Seventeen of the States require three years actual study of the law and the trend throughout the country is in that direction.

Apart from these considerations, our territorial expansion in distant regions, the application of new agencies and methods to our industries, and the increasing difficulty in reconciling the respective rights and interests of capital and labor are creating political and social problems whose just and peaceful solution will continue to tax to the utmost the resources of statesmanship. Only trained thinkers are real statesmen and the law is perhaps the greatest of all schools for the special mental training of public men. A mere knowledge of the system and body of law taught in a law school or in law offices, however fully mastered, is not so valuable to the student as the early development of the thinking and reasoning faculties, which enable one to continue his education through life, and to grapple with great questions in any field of thought, and your committee is led to believe that an additional year of this mental training would be fruitful in results, and would amply compensate for delayed admission to the Bar.

There has been suggested the desirability of furnishing the examiners some more positive and satisfactory evidence than is now afforded of the good moral character of applicants for admission, and of the maintenance of such character for some fixed period after admission, but we have not been able to make any practical suggestions with this view.

A distinguished lawyer has said: "The rectitude of the Bench means the rectitude of the Bar." He was ther

speaking of the Supreme Court of the United States where, probably, the character of the Bench is more largely than elsewhere a reflection of the character of its Bar. We think, however, it would be more accurate, as a general proposition to say: "The rectitude of the Bar means the rectitude of the Bench;" an upright, high-minded Bar could not fail to detect, and would not tolerate a corrupt judge; but the Bar has a hundred opportunities, where the judge has one, of discovering a corrupt practitioner, and we believe its protection against unworthy members discovered after admission, is best left to its own fearlessness and sense of duty acting through its present instrumentalities.

JAMES A. PEARCE, Chairman.

William S. Bryan, Jr.: I move that the report be accepted and filed.

The motion was duly seconded, and after vote was declared carried.

The President: The next business in order is the report of the Committee on Grievances. Mr. Bartlett is not here today, but he will be here tomorrow. I understand there is really nothing to report, and if it is the will of the Association, the submitting of the report can be passed until tomorrow.

Thomas Foley Hisky: I move that the report be passed.

The motion was duly seconded, and after vote was declared carried.

The President: The next business in order is the report of the Committee on Legal Biography.

The Secretary: Mr. Williams is not able to be here. at this time to make this report, and has asked me tɔ submit it for him.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON LEGAL BIOGRAPHY.

The Committee on Legal Biography herewith submits biographies of the following members of the Maryland Bar:

Hon. Thomas J. Morris, United States District Judge. John Wirt Randall, of Anne Arundel County.

Daniel M. Thomas, of Baltimore City.

John F. Williams, of Baltimore City.

Respectfully,

GEORGE WEEMS WILLIAMS,

Chairman.

THOMAS J. MORRIS.

Thomas J. Morris, late senior United States District Judge for the District of Maryland, was born in Baltimore, September 24, 1837, and died at his home in Baltimore on June 6, 1912.

Judge Morris' father was John Morris, and his mother was before marriage Miss Sarah Chancellor. His preliminary education was received at the Medfield School, conducted by John Prentiss in the suburbs of Baltimore. He entered Harvard College and was graduated in 1856; later he studied law in the Harvard Law School. After the completion of his course at Harvard he continued the study of law in the office of Hinkley & Morris, a firm comprised of the late Edward Otis Hinkley and the late John T. Morris, a first cousin of Judge Morris. He was admitted to the Bar of Baltimore City, November 19, 1860, and shortly afterwards became a member of the firm of Hinkley

& Morris, in which firm he was actively engaged in the practice of law until his appointment to the Federal Bench.

In July, 1879, Judge Morris was commissioned by President Hayes as district judge for the District of Maryland, succeeding Hon. William Fell Giles. He took the oath of office July 16, 1879, being then in his forty-second year. Continuing on the Bench until his death, his service covered a period of nearly thirty-three years. His decisions antedate the first volume of the Federal Reporter and extend throughout that series of reports. After attaining the age of seventy years, at which he might have retired under the act of Congress, Judge Morris preferred to continue the active duties of the judicial office. Provision was made by Congress for an additional district judge for the District of Maryland during his lifetime, and the present district judge, Hon. John C. Rose, was appointed in April, 1910.

It is difficult to describe adequately the esteem and confidence in which Judge Morris was held by the Bar and the entire community. Always patient, courteous and approachable in his manner to members of the Bar, and clear and sound, logical and convincing, polished and interesting in his judicial utterance, his career approached that of the ideal judge to a degree that few judges attain. The tribute to his memory by members of the Bar and the response from the Bench by his associate Judge Rose at the memorial meeting held June 14, 1912, fittingly marked the passing of a great jurist.

The members of the Bar Association of Baltimore City desiring near the close of his judicial career to testify their esteem and love for the judge who had so long presided in the Federal Courts of the Maryland District, presented on January 19, 1911, a life-like portrait of him, which his been hung behind the Bench in the court room in which he sat.

In addition to the conscientious performance of the duties of his official station, Judge Morris was active in many fields of usefulness. He was a trustee of the Johns Hop

kins University, vice-president of the Enoch Pratt Free Liabrary, president of the directors of the Aged Women's and Aged Men's Home, a trustee of the Maryland School for the Blind, president of the Harvard Club of Baltimore City, vice-president of the American Unitarian Association and vice-president of the Red Cross Society. He was much interested in the work of the American Bar Association, the meetings of which he frequently attended, and was vice-president of that body for the State of Maryland.

His religious faith was Unitarian, and he was a regular attendant and a member of the board of trustees of the First Independent Christ's Church.

Judge Morris was a man of wide reading, and his sympathetic and discriminating interest in literature covered a broad field. He was a graceful speaker, possessed of a fine sense of humor and most entertaining in conversation. His courtesy was as unaffected as it was unfailing and delightful.

Judge Morris' home life was most attractive and many friends were entertained at his charming home. He married in 1867 Miss Sarah Pinkerton Cushing, a daughter of Joseph Cushing, Jr. His wife and a daughter, Miss Josephine Cushing Morris, and a sister, Miss Elizabeth C. Morris, survive him.

JOHN WIRT RANDALL.

John Wirt Randall, lawyer, legislator, educator, banker, author, churchman, Christian, was born in Annapolis, Md., on March 6, 1845, and his earth-life of singular usefulness and honor closed on the 16th day of August, 1912. Of distinguished ancestry both on the paternal and maternal side, he added lustre to the name of a family than which no other, probably, has contributed more to the nation and the State. His great-grandfather, Thomas Randall, came from England early in the eighteenth century and settled in Westmoreland county, Va., where he became a large land owner