Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 189]

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181 history and of present events, conform most nearly with your convictions of wisdom, prudence and justice, presuming in advance that in some respects neither will come up to the full measure of your wishes Or opinions. When you have settled yourselves, do not change for frivolous reasons, by whims and caprices, and do not be afraid to change when momentous crises come which you recognize as the turning points of the times. Then go into your own camp, whither your convictions lead you, and where, therefore, you belong, and use your best endeavors to elevate its moral tone, improve its methods, broaden its economical views, and to put its wisest, strongest and most honorable men in places of trust and responsibility. Respect your opponents. They may hold their opinions as honestly and as tenaciously as yon yourselves will. . You should make it a rule to vote whenever and wherever you have a right to vote, and you rhould use your vote in such a way that it will have its full value in deciding the questions at issue. To refrain from voting is very often to vote silently for the very interests that you would prefer to have defeated. But at the actual election the voter has little choice. The question there to be settled is not usually of men, but of party. The place where individual influence may be efficient is in the earlier stages of political work, when it is determined what men shall represent the principles of the party, and to these points I commend your attention. Finally, remember that all great practical questions have been determined by those who have had the discretion to temper their desires by the possibilities of attainment. Compromise is a word of evil repute, and I shall never advise you to compromise with evil; but worthy men have found it advisable to compromise between what they want and what they can get. I have heard a great deal of rhetoric about aiming at the sun—it is certainly a splendid target—but I never heard that anybody ever hit it. I have already referred to the majesty of the law as something that should reign with regal authority in every community. I would in every possible way enhance the dignity and the solemnity of law, as the embodiment, the visible presence of absolute justice, until next to God himself nothing should be more worthy to receive the honor and the homage of all men. To secure this end all the processes of law and all steps in the administration of justice should be# directed. The statutes which formulate laws and penalties should be made comprehensive and luminous. The methods by which law is practiced and applied should be made simple, direct and inevitable. The bench, if not. pure, should be made pure, to be adorned by men learned in jurisprudence, honest and honorable, and removed as far as possible from all bias, .personal, partisan, or political. Judges ought never to have been elected. They never should have been subjected to the seductions of political favor, or the pressure of popular opinions. It is not a pleasant sight to see a judge canvassing votes between the terms of court. It is a shame that one should be retired because of just, but unpopular judgments,, pronounced from the bench. It furnishes an unpleasant comment upon the legal practice of to-day, that so much business is, or has to be, carried forward to court of higher or of last resort. If law were the exact science that