rendered on the guaranty? In Spinning against Allen, 10 Wash., 570, the court said no. In Horton vs. Banking Company, 15 Wash., 399, the question is answered in the affirmative, provided the corporate stock is community property and not the separate property of the husband. The Spinning case is distinguished on the ground that in that case the stock was the separate property of the husband, although the published opinion did not state that fact. The growing tendency to depart from precedent, I attribute in some measure to the great increase in the publications of reported cases. Fifty years ago, the number of cases reported in Englishspeaking countries was so small that a few shelves easily contained all of them. Now they have swelled to such proportions that the publishers are compelled to take their titles from all points of the compass in order to find names enough to go around. Formerly the practitioner could ascertain, in a brief time, what precedents were in point, and the court was able to read, digest and understand them. Now, on almost any mooted question, a hundred or perhaps a thousand cases can be cited, more or less in point. They are often thrown together in the brief and dumped upon a tired and disgusted court. The result is the creation among the bench and bar of legal agnostics, who dispairingly surrender all hope of mastering the reasoning or of understanding the facts of the various cases, and concluding that about as much can be said on one side of the case as the other, finally ask themselves : "How ought this case to be decided as a matter of right?" number of law books is thus, by a sort of paradox, the great cause of the gradual weakening of the force of precedent. Too much precedent becomes the equivalent of no precedent at all, and the court is left on a boundless sea to direct its course as best it can, from its own observations, almost unaided by chart or compass. What is the remedy? We cannot stop buying the books and if we buy them, we cannot stop citing them. If we do not cite them, our opponents will. As a distinguished lawyer of the Southwest (Hon. U. M. Rose) has observed, "We are like the great powers of Europe; one cannot disarm unless all agree to disarm." A conference of bar associations would probably be as fruitless of tangible results as the recent conference at The Hague. I believe a partial solution lies in giving to the reported cases a different The great treatment from that which they generally receive in briefs and opinions. Former decisions of the same court should be adhered to on the principle of stare decisis regardless of decisions elsewhere, for the purpose of giving to the law a certainty, without which the security of private property and the rights of contracting parties utterly fail. Decisions of other courts, however, should be cited and should be valued only as arguments giving them such weight as would be given the same reasoning if found elsewhere. The fact that the Supreme Court of Arizona or of Hawaii or perhaps of Puerto Rico has decided one way or the other is not important in the State of Washington. If in the reports of those decisions, there is any reasoning which commends itself to the bench or bar of this State, it should be submitted for its value as an argument regardless of the source from which it comes. By following this course, it might be that the lines of decision in the different states would diverge from each other, but in the end, each state would have a succession of precedents of its own, more valuable and more worthy of being followed. I do not overlook the fact that it is necessary for the courts at times to draw close distinctions in deciding cases. Lawyers who find a former decision of the same court somewhat in point are prone to emphasize it and bring it forward as decisive of a case in which the circumstances are materially different, and the court is not only justified in announcing, but is compelled to announce, that a different rule of law applies in the latter case than in the former. Much of this confusion arises from the practice of the courts of writing long opinions indulging in much unnecessary dicta. Shorter opinions announcing the simple law of the case would provide fewer stumbling-blocks for the profession. In the language of Mr. Choate, "If you try to drive a case through dicta, it is like trying to get yourself through a barbed wire fence without injury to your garments." We often try to hold courts to what we call the logical conclusion of a former decision, ignoring the plain fact that almost any proposition carried to what we call its "logical conclusion" runs into an absurdity. In human affairs, every truth is to be accepted with certain limitations and qualifications, and in stating the truth,-in codifying it, so to speak, we cannot foresee the limitations and qualifications which another state of facts will render necessary. We are apt to reason in straight lines, forgetting that straight lines (if they exist at all) are rare things in Nature. Without invading the realms of astronomy, about which I know very little, I may express a doubt whether any heavenly body moves in a straight line. So it seems to be with truth. It seems to move in an orbit whose curve is peculiarly its own and which the human mind has not been able thoroughly to comprehend. Not even a Newton or a Leibnitz has ever discovered the equation to the curve of truth. Any system of jurisprudence and any method of administering justice that depends upon human endeavor must necessarily be imperfect and at times must fail to obtain its object. The desire to accomplish justice is an essential quality in the upright judge. So also is the desire to administer the law as one finds it and not as one desires it to be. If in recent decisions, there is shown a tendency to give more prominence to one of these qualities than to the other, I think it will be found in the inclination to adhere more to the former than to the latter, and that the stability and certainty of the law will be better secured by following more closely the ancient landmarks. Though not connected with the subject of his address, I cannot at this time forbear calling attention to an eventful anniversary which will be celebrated before our next meeting. February 4th, 1901, will be the one hundredth anniversary of the occasion on which John Marshall first took his seat upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. By a happy coincidence, the day of Marshall's accession to the bench was also the first day on which the Supreme Court sat at Washington. The American Bar Association has voted to observe the coming anniversary as "John Marshall Day" and has recommended that the occasion be fittingly observed throughout the United States. Though the commemoration of the ability and virtues of the Chief Justice should not be restricted to members of the Bar, it is eminently proper that the lead should be taken by his chosen profession, upon which his career reflected so much honor. The thirty-four years during which he occupied the highest judicial position in the land were really the formative period of the union. Under his strong guidance, the experiment of the federal government became an assured reality. His masterful reasoning and powerful intellectual force welded together the discordant elements and unified a number of jealous states into a compact Nation. The constitution was no longer a philosophical treatise, the plaything of casuists, but a charter adopted by a united people for the government of their country. Merely to suggest to this Association the significance of the coming anniversary is sufficient. The Bar of Washington will not be behind their brethren in other states in doing honor to the memory of this great lawyer, judge and patriot. THE STATUS OF OUR NEWLY ACQUIRED BY WILL. H. THOMPSON, OF SEATTLE. Mr. President and Gentlemen of the State Bar Association: Our visiting friend from St. Louis asked me in a kindly voice, when the President had just announced that I was going to give an address upon the subject named by the President, "What do you know about that subject, Mr. Thompson?" I told him "Nothing." He says, "Then you are prepared to talk." Whether that remark of the learned Judge was made to me because of certain peculiarities that characterize my discourses, or upon the the theory that one generally at these meetings attempts to talk about something of which he knows nothing, I will leave you to judge. However that may be, I feel that it is due to the Bar Association, in one respect at least, that I should render an apology. I had intended to prepare a paper in response to the request that has been made upon me, and except for an overwhelming press of business just at the wrong time, I should have done so; but I found it impossible, and at the request of your President, shall talk a few minutes to fill a gap in your time, and perhaps make some suggestions that will enable you to do something in the way of discussion, and thereby at least nominally fill the place assigned to me. It goes without saying that lawyers, as well as citizens generally, will not be able to agree, for many, many years at least, upon the true legal status of our new possessions. It has been so in the past with reference to every acquisition of territory that the United States Government has made. Very early in the history of the government, upon the acquisition of the first territorial possessions, the thirteen original states put forth a formal claim to be the |