what it is that we are compelled to know or
supposed to know--but I am very sorry to say we don't know at all.
[Laughter.] We are supposed to take judicial cognizance of all questions
of international law, of treaties, of prize laws, and of the law of
nations generally. We take notice of it without its being specially
pleaded. We take notice of the laws and statutes of every State of these
thirty-eight States of the Union. They are not to be proved in our
courts; they are not brought in issue, but the judge of the Federal
courts, from the lowest one to the highest, is supposed to take judicial
cognizance of all the statute laws, and to know them, of the whole
thirty-eight States of the Union, and of the eight Territories besides.
In addition to that, we are supposed to take notice of the common law of
the country. We take notice of the equity principles, and we apply them
now in separate courts, notwithstanding you have combined them in your
processes in the State courts. We are supposed to understand the civil
law on which Texas and Louisiana have framed their system of laws; and
we are supposed to understand all the other laws, as I said, of the
States, divergent and varied as they are. We do the best we can to
understand them; but, gentlemen, permit me to say that, but for the bar
which practices before us; but for the lawyers who come up from New York
and Pennsylvania, and from the States of the West and of the South, to
tell us what the law is; but for the instruction and aid which they
afford to us, our duties would be but poorly fulfilled.

I take pleasure in saying, gentlemen, and it is the last thing that I
shall trouble you with, that a bar or set of men superior in
information, in the desire to impart that information to the court, a
set of gentlemen in the legal profession more instructive in their
arguments, could hardly be found in any country in the world.
[Applause.] I doubt whether their equals are found, when you consider
the variety of the knowledge which they must present to us, the topics
which they discuss, the sources from which they derive the matter which
they lay before us. I say that it is with pleasure that the court relies
upon the lawyers of the country to enable it to perform its high
functions.

JOHN MORLEY

LITERATURE AND POLITICS

[Speech of John Morley at the banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May
3, 1890. Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Academy, said in
int