said five acres upon the above conditions," is a bill of sale within the Bills of Sale Act, 17 and 18'Vict., c. 36, s. 1, as the intention is apparent to pass the immediate property. Growing crops are not "personal chattels " within 8.1, which is defined by 8.7 to "mean goods, furniture, fixtures, and other articles capable of complete transfer by delivery." Brantom v. Griffits, L. R., 2 C. P. D. (C. A.) 212.

BOOK NOTICE.

INDIANA REPORTS, VOL. LIII.

Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Judicature of the State of Indiana, with Tables of the Cases Reported and Cases Cited, and an Index. By James B. Black, Official Reporter. Vol. LIII., containing the Cases Decided at the May Term, 1876, not pub

lished in Vol. LII, and Cases Decided at the November Term, 1876. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Publishing House, Printers and Binders, 1877.

Wright v. Compton, p. 337. A person, while traveling along the public highway, was injured by fragments thrown by a blast of gunpowder, made by defendants' servant, who was quarrying for defendant near the highway. Held, that defendant was liable, and that without regard to whether or not the servant was negligent. Franklin Life Ins. Co. v. Sefton, adm'r, p. 380. A person having no insurable interest in the life of another person, cannot take an assignment of an insurance policy upon the life of such other. Frost v. Tarr, p. 390. An agreement by one, in consideration of the performance by another of certain services, to make a specified provision for such other in his will, can be enforced against the personal representative of the former if no provision is made in the will, and the

plaintiff is not limited in his recovery to the value of the services. Such a promise is not within the Statute of Frauds. Krach v. Heilman, p. 519. Plaintiff's husband became drunk upon liquor sold by defendant,

cisions of interest, among which we notice the following: Tucker v. Taylor, p. 93. The lien of a mechanic for labor on a chattel cannot exist, where, by the terms of the contract, there is to be a future day of payment for the labor. I. & St. L. R. R. Co. v. Stout, p. 143. The pendency of a suit brought by a person, since deceased, for personal injury received from the negligence of defendant, cannot be plead in bar of an action for his death from the same cause brought by his administrator, the former action having abated by death. In the same case it is held that the failure to act with perfect prudence and unusual care in the presence of unexpected danger did not constitute a defense to an action for injury then received. Eagan v. State, p. 162. Courts and juries take notice, that whisky is an intoxicating liquor, without proof of the fact. Mullikin v. Davis, p. 206. When intoxicating liquor is sold at retail, contrary to a statute making such sale a misdemeanor, the seller cannot recover the price or value thereof from the buyer. Bender v. The State, p. 254. Courts of this State cannot look beyond the enrolled act of the legislature to ascertain whether there has been a compliance with the requirements of the Constitution, that no bill shall be presented to the governor within two days next previous to the final adjournment of the general assembly. T. W. & W. R'y Co. v. McDonough, p. 289.

Plaintiff below pur

chased a ticket over defendants' railroad, and took a slow train. He gave up his ticket to the conductor, who gave him a card which the conductor said would be good on an express train, which would pass the slow train at a certain station. Plaintiff, at the station named, took passage in the express train. The card given him was refused on the express train, and he was ejected for the non-payment of fare. Held, that the railway company were liable for ejecting plaintiff, and that $400 damages was not excessive. Kelley v. State, p. 311. Where wounds are inflicted, and death follows, it is not indispensable to sustain a conviction for murder or manslaughter that the wounds were necessarily fatal, and were the direct cause of death, but if they caused the death indirectly, through a chain of natural effects, unchanged by human action, it is sufficient. Higert v. Trustees of Ind. Asb. University, p. 326. Where a number of persons subscribe an instrument whereby they agree to pay certain sums of money, severally, to be expended in the erection of a college building, their mutual promises constitute a sufficient consideration for the promise of each.

barrel, which rolled upon him, so that he died. Held, that the intoxication was not the proximate cause of the injury and death, and plaintiff could not recover for it under the civil damage law. Balt., P. & Ch. R'y Co. v. New Alb. & S. R. R. Co., p. 597, is upon the now interesting subject of Removal of Causes to the Federal Court, and the requisites of affidavits under the act of Congress of March 2, 1867, are considered. The reporting is excellently done, and the volume is well printed and bound.

THE

NOTES.

statutes and rules regulating practice in the Supreme Court of Iowa, revised at the June term, 1877, have been issued in a convenient form by Mills & Co., of Des Moines, in that State.-The Journal of Jurisprudence and Scottish Law Magazine for July contains leading articles upon "Divorce and Forfeiture; ""A Procurator Fiscal, what he was, what he is and what he will be;" "The Jurisdiction of the Local Courts in Ireland, Scotland and England compared;" and "The position of the Masters of Public Schools under the Educational (Scotland) Act, 1872.” The articles are well written, and the number as a whole is fully up to the average.

A correspondent calls our attention to a plea in abatement to indictment on ground of misnomer, in the case of Michael Sunday v. State of Missouri, 14 Mo. 417. It was an appeal from the St. Louis Criminal Court. Sunday appeared in proper person, and one Lackland for the State. The appellant argued as follows: "The appellant hails from Germany where he came into the world, bearing the ancestral name of Sontag, which, translated from the Teutonic into Anglo-Saxon, means Sunday. By the latter name he has been impleaded in the criminal court, that tribunal claiming the right to rebaptize him in English. Of the legality of such proceedings he is dubious. A Dutch wood-chopper has a little pride in his patronymic, and insists that the power which would seek to divest him of it is of a price with that which would despoil a Highlander of his breeches. At the unprecedented liberty taken with his name he was, as became him, indignant. He gave vent to his indignation in the form of a plea of misnomer, asseverating that he was not Sunday, but Sontag. That if Sunday had been guilty of

The Albany Law Journal.

AP

ALBANY, JULY 28, 1877.

CURRENT TOPICS.

PPLICATION has been made to the Surrogate of Albany county for letters of administration upon the estate of Anneke Jans-Bogardus, who died in this city in 1663-two hundred and fourteen years ago. The petitioner, who claims to be as near of kin as anybody at this day can be to the deceased lady, sets forth that the decedent left a will, and

that of the personal property therein disposed of there remains a family bible and its contents, and other chattels undivided, besides certain real estate situate in the counties of Albany and New York. Citations have been issued to all interested to show cause why such letters should not issue, returnable September 26, 1877. The object of this proceeding is to revive anew the litigation in respect to the lands in the city of New York, possessed by the Trinity Church corporation, and which it has held for more than one hundred and seventy-two years. The history of this litigation is somewhat remarkable. It was instituted by Nicholas Brower in 1750, who brought a suit of ejectment, wherein he was nonsuited by default. In 1760 he renewed his suit, but was again beaten. In 1807 Colonel Macolm, the husband of another claimant, instituted a suit of the same nature, which had the same result. In 1830 an action was instituted by Peter Oakley and others. In 1834 another was begun by Jonas Humbert, and in 1847 a very enthusiastic individual, Cornelius Brower by name, brought nine suits.

In

they have heretofore been free, namely, that of professional vagabondage. This evil has, until now, been almost unknown on this side of the water, and it is not surprising that we find our laws unfitted to deal with it. Indeed it is, under our system of government, impossible to frame laws to punish A statute that vagabondage, pure and simple. should forbid a man without means to travel along the highway, and when hungry to ask for food and clothing from those who have it to spare, would be of doubtful constitutionality under the fundamental law of any State, to say nothing of its being in antagonism with the popular idea of justice and humanity. Yet, traveling and begging is all that is necessary to make a tramp, and the doing of this is all that, as a rule, can be brought home to any one of them. Yet this, although troublesome, is not the chief thing that makes the tramp a dreaded nuisance. It is rather the belief that he will, whenever he thinks it safe to do so, commit offenses

against person or property. And that this belief has good ground is shown by the record of crimes, which can be attributed to none but tramps, which daily fills the newspapers. There have been numerous endeavors made in various places for the suppression of the evil by the enforcement of the statutes against vagrancy, but these efforts have been attended with only partial success, and more rigid laws are demanded. Perhaps something might be done by conferring upon petty magistrates more extended powers in respect to offenses such as vagabonds are liable to commit. Yet, no amount of legislation will take away from the prosecution the necessity of producing sufficient evidence to warrant a conviction, the want of which seems to be one

State courts of law or equity, the defendant was victorious, each case being dismissed without a trial on the merits. About 1873 resort was had to the United States Circuit Court, but with no better success, so far as the plaintiffs were concerned. Once before application has been made to a surrogate for letters of administration, but the applicants were then unable to show that there was any undistributed personalty of the decedent. The discovery of a bible "and other chattels" seems to have relieved the case of that impediment, though it is difficult to see what advantage can be gained by the issue of letters of administration, should such issue take place. We have little doubt that the title of the present possessor of the real property alleged to have belonged to Mrs. Jans-Bogardus will successfully withstand any attack that can be made upon it under the present proceedings.

bondage. The probability is, that the people in those parts of the country where the tramp most abounds will need to establish local detective systems, whereby they can procure his punishment if he happens to commit any criminal offense.

The question of the legal validity and effect of the union between two of the Presbyterian bodies of this country was involved in the case of Estate of Daniel Speers, decided on the 27th ult. by the Orphans' Court of Alleghany county, Pa. A testator left a sum to the "trustees of the Synod of the Associate Presbyterian Church of North America." But the body mentioned did not, at the time of the probate of the will, exist under that name, but in its stead there was what is known as The United Presbyterian Church of North America, made up by a union between it and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. The court held that the union was valid, and the trustees of the new church were entitled to take the bequest. That the union mentioned was valid

and effectual to carry with it and preserve rights of property which had belonged to the separate churches has been decided by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in McGinnis v. Watson, 5 Wright, 9, and by the Supreme Court of Iowa in McBride v. Porter, 17 Iowa, 203.

Those who have occasion to consult the printed volumes of our statutes must be struck with the frequent repetition, at the bottom of a page, of the phrase "so in the original," referring, by means of a star or other device, to some erroneous reading, which, if it were not for these cautionary words, might be taken to be a printer's blunder. The frequency of this annotation is a very good indication of the carelessness with which our laws are framed. Many of the errors thus noted are indeed trivial, but some of them are of grave importance, being in defiance of the laws of English grammar, and uncertain in meaning, to say nothing of faultiness of style which prevails in almost every section of every statute. In the General Statutes of 1877 the proof-readers discovered and noticed more than twenty-five gross errors, some of spelling and some of construction, which would probably indicate more than one hundred and fifty mistakes discoverable by a proof-reader in the whole statute law of this year, exclusive of the new Code. Whether all the errors actually existing were discovered and noticed we cannot say, but there were enough to show the need of some provision for the more careful drafting of the statutes. In Great Britain no bill is considered until it has gone through the manipulation of a parliamentary draftsman. The result is carefully-considered legislation, and, consequently, comparatively few laws. In fact, we have more new laws in a year than Great Britain has in a decade, and, so far as can be ascertained, as much real progress is made in legislative reform there as with us. A legislative draftsman might operate to prevent many half-considered enactments which now creep into the statute book, to the bewilderment of the courts, the annoyance of the public and the emolument of the lawyers, but that circumstance should not stand in the way of the adoption of a means to secure laws reasonably free from errors in spelling, grammar and style.

We often hear, especially in trials before a jury, eloquent tributes paid to the law, its power and its benefits. The guardian care which it exercises over our property, our families and our person, never sleeping, tiring never, and almost omnipresent, has furnished a theme for hundreds of perorations. Yet most of the talk of this kind has passed with those who are familiar only with 'practical life as mere moonshine, good enough to entertain a jury or an audience, or to show off the ability of counsel in the speaking line, but of no further use, and in

no sense true. It is only when the public security is disturbed by ungoverned men, and the power of the law is for a little while dormant, that unsentimental people realize that the tributes of the orator but faintly portray the advantages derived by the community at large from the regular administration of justice. We have had during the past week numerous illustrations of the dangers attending a departure from the strict enforcement of legal rights. Such an enforcement often, and perhaps usually, produces suffering to some, but the other course produces tenfold more suffering, with the additional evil result that it weakens the foundations of order by rendering contracts insecure and the fruits of industry and economy uncertain. from the events of the past few days, the people at large learn to appreciate the advantage of an impartial application of the laws, and also that a rule of law that is strictly just, without regard to results, is the best in the long run for all, we may gain more good than we suffer harm from the occurrence of those events.

If,

In the controversy between the Attorney-General and Mr. John D. Townsend in relation to the Tweed confession, letters have been written to the public by each of the principal disputants, by Mr. Tweed and by one Bryant, who acted as a sort of a messenger between the high contracting parties in the negotiations relating to the confession. Those of the public who have read all the letters carefully know just as much about what they relate to as those who have not read any of them. We suppose, all interested having had their say, the matter will now be dropped.

THE

NOTES OF CASES.

case of Nettleton v. Morrison, recently decided by the United States Circuit Court for the District of Minnesota, was an action to quiet title, and the facts were these. One Grignon, an infant, executed to one Zanzius, a power of attorney, in which he represented himself to be of full age, to convey certain real estate belonging to him, and, under this power, Zanzius conveyed the land to defendant for a valuable consideration which Grignon received. One year after he became of age, Grignon executed a deed of the same premises to complainant, but he never restored to defendant the money received from him for the first conveyance. The deed first executed was on record, before complainant received his conveyance. The question was, could this action be maintained without a tender back of the money paid by defendant? The court held that it could, saying that the minor having received the consideration for the property at the time of the conveyance under the power of attorney, made the deed his own act, and it was void