great hardship on a purchaser of a mortgage or debenture not duly registered, and will make it necessary for purchasers to make inquiry before completing the purchase, thus checking the negotiability of such securities.

On the whole, however, the bill, if it becomes law, should do much to dissipate the evil odor into which the practice of company formation has come.

The London Law Magazine says: "It will be remembered that an Irishman, named Cleary, and his family, most cruelly burnt the wife of the former to death, under the belief that she was a witch, and that so soon as the victim was consumed the real wife would appear at the door of the cabin riding on a white horse. The man has just been sentenced at the Tipperary Assizes in Clonmell to penal servitude for twenty years, the jury having mercifully found him guilty of manslaughter only. The learned judge, Mr. Justice O'Brien, expressed surprise at the degree of darkness of mind, moral ruin, and superstition existing in the nineteenth century. Yet these are the people whom we are told are capable of exercising the parliamentary franchise."

attention. This was in the famous "Sunday Car" case, decided in 1865 in Philadelphia. While a member of the Supreme Court of the State, Justice Strong won a reputation for judicial learning that extended far beyond its limits, and when, in 1870, President Grant transmitted his name and that of the late Justice Bradley to the Senate for confirmation as associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, there was a very general feeling of satisfaction among the members of his profession. On January 15, 1872, Mr. Justice Strong announced the decision of the court affirming the constitutionality of the legal tender act, and Justice Bradley concurred in a lengthy opinion.

But the legal tender question was not the only one of importance growing out of the war in the settlement of which Mr. Justice Strong took a prominent part. The constitutional amendments, intended to crystallize and preserve the results of the war, and the congressional legislation necessary to give these constitutional provisions force and effect, were before the court. In Bigelow v. Forest, Mr. Justice Strong prepared the decision announcing that under the Confiscation Act of July 17, 1862, a decree and sale only established a confiscation during the life of the one for whose offence the land was condemned and sold. In Tennessee v. Davis, he delivered the opinion. of the court establishing the principle that the

On Monday, August 19, 1895, ex-Justice William Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, died at Lake Minnewaska, N. Y. William Strong was the son of the Rev. William Lighthouse Strong, and was born in Som-judicial power of the United States embraced ers, Tolland county, Conn., May 6, 1808. He was educated at the Plainfield Academy and Yale College, graduating at the age of 20 years. After a brief career as school teacher, he returned to New Haven and graduated from the Law School of Yale. Removing thence to Philadelphia, he was admitted to the bar in 1832. The young lawyer chose Reading, Pa., for his home, and entered upon the practice of his profession. In 1847, having taken an active interest in politics, he was elected to represent the district in Congress, and served two terms. He then returned to the practice of his profession, and in 1857 was elected a judge of the Supreme Court of the State of Pennsylvania for a term of fifteen years. On October 1, 1868, he resigned that office and resumed his practice at the bar. One of his decisions on the supreme bench of the State attracted great

alike civil and criminal cases arising under the Constitution and the laws of the United States, and that their removal from a State to a federal court was no invasion of State domain and power. In Virginia v. Rives, he also prepared the opinion of the court, holding that the object of the Constitution, which authorized the enactment of statutes for the removal into the federal court of civil suits or prosecutions against any person who was denied, or could not enforce, in State courts any rights secured to him by any law providing for the equal rights of citizens of the United States, was to place the colored race, in respect of civil rights, upon a level with the whites.

In ex parte Virginia, Judge Strong announced the decision of the court that whoever, by virtue of public position under a State government, deprived another of life, liberty,

or property, without due process of law, or denied or took away the equal protection of the laws, violated the constitutional inhibition; that his act, as such officer, was the act of the State; that power was given to Congress to enforce its provisions by appropriate legislation, and that such legislation must act not upon the abstract thing called the State, but upon the persons who are agents of the State.

is by the political development of many generations of men, and it is not the mere sole creation of the Philadelphia convention.

Mr. Ellis Stevens, in the work before us, treats of that document which goes by the name of The American Constitution, and avoids all side issues. He deals with the making of the constitution, its legislative organism, its legislative powers, points out in what manner its executive is related to the ancient executive of England, discloses the popular feeling of Americans against kingship-an opposition largely due to the fact that the struggle for emancipation had been forced upon them by their sovereign in person - and describes the derivation of the American courts from the English colonial courts and judges, and explains, in a very lucid manner, the continuity of our bill of rights in It is always of importance in determining the treatise on an interesting subject, well digested acts of American legislation. An excellent

Justice Strong was designated by the Electoral Commission Act of 1877, as one of the judicial members of the famous tripartite tribunal which passed upon the contested presidential election of 1876. In 1880 Mr. Justice Strong, having reached the age at which retirement from the bench after ten years' service thereon is permitted, retired, and had since made his home in Washington.

value of oneself or of a condition of affairs to secure the opinion of others and to regard their view in passing and forming judgment.

and

The Law Magazine, of London, in its review on works called the "Sources of the Constitution of the United States," by Ellis Stevens, Adoption and Amendment of Constitutions in Europe and America," by Charles Borgeau, shows how our English cousins regard the Constitution of the United States and its history. The Magazine says:

Mr. Gladstone has observed that "as the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." There is some truth in this, for the American Constitution, established as a written document by the convention and in circumstances quite unique, has many elements peculiar and characteristic; but it is beginning to be realized that the American Constitution, though possessing elements of novelty, is not after all the new creation that Mr. Gladstone would imply. It is not the original composition of one body of men nor the outcome of one definite epoch. It rests upon very old principles, laboriously worked out by long ages of constitutional struggles; it looks back to the annals of the colonies and of the motherland for its sources and its explanation. The constitution has been made what it

and clearly evolved.

"Mr. Borgeau devotes his work to the process of Constitution-making in those States which admit of an isolated treatment, and render possible the attainment of a general theory. He points out that a constitution is the fundamental law according to which the government of a State is organized and the relations of individuals with society regulated; it may either be a code or a collection of texts promulgated at a certain time by a sovereign authority, or in the second place it may be the result of a series of legislative acts, judicial decisions, precedents and traditions of dissimilar origin and unequal value.

"The English Constitution-the oldest of all constitutions-belongs to the second division. The private law of the United Kingdom is uncodified, and her fundamental law is unwritten.

An unwritten constitution does not, as a whole, furnish innovators with a definite concrete point of attack; but as it lies within the ordinary competence of Parliament to increase or diminish it by mere statutes, indirect blows may be aimed at it all the more danganous, because not immediately and generally apparent. Mr. Borgeau directs his study to those countries which may be said to fall within the first division; they are becoming more and more numerous, their public law may be considered apart from the power which creates it, and

their political institutions are based upon a fundamental statute emanating from this power. The author has treated the subject objectively in a rigorously scientific and impartial manner; the method he employs is largely historical.

sections, and the general cussedness of the thing is, that it not only temporarily increases the number of persons in those States, but afterwards depopulates them to the same ex

tent.

If marriage is to be a relation which may be voluntarily ended at the volition of the parties, let us enact in the laws of the State of New York such provisions as exist in some of the statutes of the western States - the more leni

If, however, some of the old-fashioned, good ideas of the sacredness of the relation and the indissolubility of the tie yet remains in the public mind, let us endeavor to stop this booming of population in some States by enacting uniform statutes which will not allow the rich man greater privileges than his poorer

"Modern constiutions are not the systematic work of jurists. They have sometimes been the result of theoretical speculations. We can only judge constitutional system correctly by studying the origin of the fundamental lawent the better. upon which that system is based, or by tracing the evolution of the customary law to which it conforms. The aim of the book before us is to show the possibilities of such an investigation, beginning with the origin, growth and character of written constitutions, then with royal charters and constitutional compacts divided into the German group and the LatinScandinavian group, lastly, with Democratic Constitutions, viz., the United States of America, France and Switzerland. The two books before us should be found in the hands of every jurist and student of constitutional history."

The unfortunate lack of uniformity in the divorce laws of the different States is a subject on which we have written considerably. The effect of this condition of the States' statutes is two-fold. First, divorce is made easy for the rich, and hard to secure for the poor; and, second, the judgment of the court of the State granting the divorce, loses all force and effect outside of the boundaries of the State.

The historical, philosophical and analytical schools differ greatly in their conception as to how far moral law may influence the judicature of any locality, but, it is certain that public opinion will, in the end, frame legislative enactments in accordance with its ideas.

brother.

The recent case of Le Mesurier v. Le Mesurier decided by the Privy Council in England does away with the theory which has existed in England since the decision of Jack v. Jack, of Matrimonial Domicile in Jurisdiction. for Divorce. In Jack v. Jack, 24 D. 483 it was well recognized that the domicile of the party was mainly to be looked after in considering the competency of the court to decree divorce.

In that case the husband, a domiciled Scotchman had married a Scotswoman in Scotland, and had been wronged by her committing adultery there. He had gone to America without any idea of returning to Scotland, and the Scotch courts were much inclined to grant the decree, although his wife claimed that her residence was his, which was in America.

The new doctrine of matrimonial domicile was then most fully expounded by the late Lord President Inglis who argued that the true foundation of jurisdiction and divorce must have some actual relation to (1) the wrong to be redressed, (2) the remedy to be applied and (3) the character of the union which it is the effect of the decree to dissolve, and that it was not therefore necessary that the husband should at the date of the action have such a domicile within the territory as would regulate his succession at death. In short, the court held that a man could have a matrimonial domicile sepaThe divorce laws of several States have been rate and apart from any other. The decision used as a sort of boom to populate growing I of Jack v. Jack, however, was followed in many

If similar divorce laws were enacted in every State, and if these statutes contain, first, a requirement that the person seeking a divorce must have a residence of five years, and, second, that the divorced party should not marry within five years, it would seem that proper restrictions were placed upon parties, and that individuals would not in the present light and fickle fashion, seek marriage and again divorce.