55 / 110
DECEMBER, 1912]
The Gazette of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.
accounts were only made up to the end of
!
last April, and it would not mean any
;
additional trouble whatever. The bye-laws
j
provided that the annual meeting was to be
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held on the 26th November, and that notice
!
of motion must be sent in fourteen days before
that. The voting papers by which the Council
were to be elected were to be sent out not
later than the 14th November.
But the
report—he did not know under what bye-law
—did not reach the members until four or five
clays before the meeting. Now, the object of
the Council, he presumed, was to represent
the general body of the Solicitors throughout
the country (hear, hear). They ought to be
!
a democratic Society, and the Council ought
:
to be elected on democratic lines.
Every
member of the Society ought to have an
opportunity of having his say as regarded the
election of the Council. They had only to
take the figures that had been returned there
that day to show how small an interest
members in the country took in the election
of the members of the Council. The members
received three hundred odd votes.
Could
they say that the Council was elected by the
general body of the profession throughout the
country ? He believed that if the report was
sent out in plenty of time for the general
members of the profession throughout the
country to read and it study it, and if the
Council in the report stated that all or so
many members of the Council as from time to
time desired to do so would present them
selves for re-election, or that there would be-
so many vacancies owing to old members not
seeking re-election, country Solicitors would
take a far greater interest in the working of
the Society, with the result that they would
have every country member of the profession
joining. He did not suppose there was a
friendly society or a company who would
dare to send out to their members nomination
papers for their Governing Body for the
ensuing year without in the first instance
sending out a statement of accounts and
report of the work done during the previous
year.
MR.
JAMES BRADY
seconded
the
motion. He thought Mr. Craig's observations
deserved consideration, as they had good,
sound commonsense behind them.
There
could be no doubt that when gentlemen were
seeking re-election, before any persons had
any call to elect them, they ought to have
knowledge of the work performed by them
during the preceding twelve months. He felt
convinced that the members of the Society
present, as well as those who were absent,
would see the force of Mr. Craig's motion, and
that it would be carried unanimously by the
meeting that day. He was delighted to hear
the observations of the President, whose term
of office had been of the greatest possible
benefit to the profession throughout Ireland,
and his retention on
the Council .would
continue to have a good effect. The outgoing
Council were more or less modest with regard
to their efforts in the past year. There were
very few things brought before the Council in
which they did not take effective steps. He
would ask the members of the profession
throughout the country to take to heart the
request made by the President, and to join
the Society and make it a really representa
tive body (hear, hear). That was the body
to which they should belong. That was the
only effective association that could do any
good for the profession throughout Ireland.
He had protested, and would continue to
protest, against gentlemen growling who
would not pay a miserable sovereign which
would give them an opportunity of being
represented there. The local bodies—and he
was Vice-President of one of them—might be
useful for arranging the procedure of County
Courts, but they could not take such effective
action as an incorporated body such as the
Society was. Out of sixteen or seventeen
hundred on the roll of Solicitors in Ireland
only a miserable five hundred belonged to
that great Society. He could not understand
why the majority hesitated to assist the
Council
in
looking after their affairs by
paying /la year and becoming members.
MR. JAMES HENRY said he endorsed
what Mr. Brady had just said.
But his
figures were not quite accurate. The members
of the profession on the roll were 1,590. and lie
was glad to say that in the present year there
were 813 members on the roll of the Society.
That was more than half the members of the
profession were members of
the Society.
But he was not at all satisfied with that,
and he did not think they in Dublin ought to
be satisfied with it (hear, hear). There was
no doubt that the Solicitors in Dublin got
more benefit from the Society than Solicitors