The Green Bag
116
come of their efforts, command a respect and enjoy a prestige that no commercial venture into the same field can attain. Whatever may be the truth, the public suspects a selfish motive where a work is undertaken for profit, which is not suspected where the
work is undertaken pursuant to a prede terrnined purpose to accomplish a good result in which profit is not considered. Of this order are the various researches conducted by competent and earnest investigators upon foundations, endowed by men of wealth, who could not themselves otherwise con tribute to the advance of knowledge, or the public
benefit,
which
they
thus
bestow.
Illustrations will readily occur to your mind. I instance only the investigations carried on under the auspices of the Rockefeller Medical Institute or the Carnegie Institution or those contemplated to come from the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Of a like nature are works done under the auspices of the Smithsonian In stitute. They command a respect which commercial ventures of the same order of merit would not. It seems to me therefore that the commercial element must be wholly eliminated if the work is to achieve the commanding influence which its designers contemplate and which its advocates solicit for it and foresee. This element can only be eliminated in two ways, either by the
voluntary co-operation of the best and most competent men, in a public benefaction and out of devotion to the cause, as a gratuity, and at their own expense-to state this alternative is to show its impossiblity—0r to carry out the project by the co-operation as well of some person or persons of large accumulated wealth. Unfortunately, the pursuit of these activities which best qualify men to do the work
does not result in the accumulation of the wealth necessary to finance it. I conclude that in order to give the prestige which, more than anything else, will accomplish its design (assuming that the work will in any event be adequately done from the standpoint of workmanship), an endowed foundation is an important and essential factor. In my opinion upon such a foundation, and for the reason stated, it will be a success, which
as a commercial venture with capital in abundance it could not achieve. I note that one of the arguments which you use is that the work would be a. commercial success even on an endowed foundation. I trust that your plans will contemplate putting a copy, gratis if necessary, into every public library and into the hands of every judge in the land, and that they will make it possible for every lawyer to obtain it at cost. Its effectiveness in some of the respects which I mention will depend upon its wide distribution. The cheaper it is made, the wider its influence will extend. It seems to be unnecessary to enlarge upon this sug gestion. But I will call to your mind as a type to approximate the work of the Bible and Tract Societies, and the method of dis tributing government publications. . . . An approximation of this method of distribution would not of course improve the quality of the work, but in my opinion would extend its influence. In a commercial venture this would be impossible; on an endowed founda
tion it might perhaps be included in the plan. My promised few words have exceeded the bounds that such a phrase implies, but I have felt that the reasons for my views might perhaps be more useful to you than a mere statement that I heartily approve your project.
HOLMES in 1886: “The law has got to be stated over again. And I venture to say that in fifty years we shall have it in a form of which no man could have dreamed fifty years ago."-—Oration at Harvard. DILLON in 1893: “Let me suggest and enforce the thought that a capital need of our law to-day is for some gifted expositor who shall perform upon it the same operation performed by Blackstone more than a hundred years ago; that is, an institutional work systematically arranging and expounding its great principles as they have been modified, expanded, and developed since Blackstone's day, so as to make it as faithful and complete a mirror of the law as it now exists, as Blackstone's work was of the law as it existed when his Commentaries were produced. And such is also the weighty opinion of Sir Frederick Pollock: ‘A good book of Institutes of English Law would indeed be a boon for lawyers and students to welcome.’ "—Laws and jurisprudence, p. 311. "This work, as important, as noble, as any that can engage the attention of men, will fall to the pro fession to do, since it cannot be done by others. It rests, therefore, upon the profession as a duty. It will not be performed by men whose sun, like mine, has passed the zenith, and whose faces are already turned to
follow its setting."—ld., p. 387.
'
