The chief official here is called a Master in ceeded without mischief, and a sufficient knowlLunacy, whose duty it is to exercise his sur-edge of what these limits are. veillance over all persons noncompos mentos. He is the guardian and trustee for the time being of the lunatic. In New South Wales there is one lunatic in every 361 of the population. The number of the general paralytics are considerably less than in England, being one-third of that existing in that country. In Scotland and Ireland the management and treatment of the insane has much improved during the last few years. The law in each of these countries differs from each other, and also from that in vogue in Great Britain. The first Scotch act being passed in 1857, and the present one in 1866. In the whole of Scotland there are between 10,000 and 11,000 persons of unsound mind. The first effectual act dealing with the lunatics passed in Ireland was in 1821, and the first public asylum opened in that country was that of St. Patrick's Hospital, in Dublin, in 1745, by Dean Swift, who, as he him self has stated: "Gave the little wealth he had No Nation needed it so much." Dean Swift left nearly all his property for the purchase of the land to erect this hospital. As long ago as ISIO a committee appointed by the English government sat to consider the condition of the insane in Ireland. Several minor acts were passed, but nothing satisfactory until the one previously mentioned in 1891. There are between 8,000 and 9,000 persons of unsound mind in Ireland, and the ratio is, as mentioned previously, one in every 303 of the general population. As we noted before, the papers and addresses at the recent meeting of the American Bar Association were of unusual merit and interest. The president, Hon. James C. Carter, of New York city, in his address said: "A society that has not the moral energy to enforce its will in any particular case should never embody that will in the form of a statute. I know of nothing more needed among us than a deepened conviction that the sphere of legislation, like that of other forms of human activity, has its proper limits, which can never be ex "In urging the increased study by our profession of the science of legislation I mean that science in its broadest extent. It should embrace, as I conceive, two principal branches: First, the just limits of the province of legislation; that is to say, what subjects are really fit for legislative action as distinguished from those that should be left to the disposition of courts or to the dicipline that proceeds from the moral agencies of society. "I am not unaware of the extent of the field of inquiry thus embraced. It includes the fundamental elements of economic science and the principles upon which sociological inquirers are generally agreed. I do not mean that these sciences must be mastered in their details, but that the main features should be known so far as to enable the student to avail himself of their results and to employ their methods. The other important branch is the study of the proper manner in which subjects fit for legislative action should be treated; that is to say, the art of framing appropriate and effective laws. Our association takes much interest in bringing about a certain measure of unformity in our laws. "Our unwritten law is already substantially the same, and that I have always regarded as an impressive reason from abstaining from any attempt to reduce it into written forms, which would at once tend to plunge it into diversity. Whatever can be done to secure this desired uniformity must be done by voluntary concerted action. The appointment made by several States during the last year of commissions designed to forward this effort affords us much encouragement." Judge Wm. H. Taft of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the sixth circuit said, in part: "The right and opportunity freely and publicly to criticise judicial action are of vastly more importance to the body politic than the iminunity of courts and judges from unjust aspersions and attack. Nothing tends more to render judges careful in their judgments and anxiously solicitous to do exact justice than the consciousness that every act of theirs is to be subjected to the intelligent scrutiny of their sion before them may sometimes contain sugges tions which bear good fruit. Many persons whose good opinion is a high compliment regard the Federal judiciary with so much favor that they would deprecate a consideration of the criticisms already stated, as likely to give an importance to them they do not deserve. I cannot concur in this view. I believe that in large sections of this country there are many sincere and honest citizens who credit all that has been said against the Federal courts, and that it is of much imBut non-profes-portance that the reasons for the existence of these criticisms and their injustice be pointed out. It is not unfair to those governors who are the chief accusers of the Federal judiciary to say that they knew they were not speaking as they did to unwilling ears. They were merely putting into language the hostile feeling of cer tain of their constituents toward the Federal courts, and but for such feeling and criticisms would hardly have been uttered. It will in a large measure account for them, if we account for the popular sentiment they express. fellow men, and to their candid criticism. Such "In the cases of judges having a life tenure, indeed, their very independence makes the right freely to comment on their decisions of greater importance because it is the only practical and available instrument in the hands of a free people to keep their judges alive to the reasonable demands of those they serve. On the other hand, the danger of destroying the proper influence of judicial decisions, by creating unfounded prejudices against the courts, justifies and requires that unjust attacks shall be met and answered. Courts must ultimately rest their defense upon the inherent strength of the opinions they deliver as the ground for their conclusions, and must trust to the calm and deliberate judgment of all the people as their best vindication. But the bar has much to do with the formation of that opinion, and a discus "It will be my endeavor, therefore, first, to show that much, if not all, of the present hostility to the Federal courts in certain parts of the country and among certain groups of the people can be traced to causes over which those courts can exercise no control, and is necessarily due to the character of the jurisdiction with which they are vested, and not to injustice in its exercise; and second, that the criticisms which such hostility has engendered are in themselves without foundation. "The Federal judiciary was the arbiter in the first great political controversy of the United States, and one which is continually reappearing in different forms. The general language of the Constitution required construction to apply it to cases arising in the organization and maintenance of the government. The two parties which had engaged in heated controversy over the adoption of the covenant at all continued it over its narrow or broad interpretation. The Supreme Court in the beginning was made up largely of men whose predilection was for a liberal construction, and who believed thoroughly in the national idea. This was soon manifest in their decisions which brought down. upon the court in the anathema of the strict constructionists whose great effort it thereupon gation of capital, the other essential element with labor in producing anything, became an obvious means of securing economy in the manufacture of anything. Corporations had long been known as convenient commercial instruments for securing and wielding efficiently such aggregations of capital. Charters were at first conferred by special act upon particular individuals, and with varying powers, but so great became the advantage of incorporation with the facility afforded for managing great enterprises, and the limitation of the liability of investors, that it was deemed wise in this country, became to weaken the judiciary. It was attempted to control their independence by making very wide the grounds for impeachment. The great chief justice was constantly threatened with this fate by partisans, and the attacks upon his alleged usurpations were frequent and fierce. Jefferson's severe words concerning the Federal judiciary, now so often quoted by these latter day critics, were written about 1820, as the result of a decision in Cohens v. Virginia, reaffirming the power of the Supreme Court of the United States on the validity of a State law. "The change of feeling toward the Federal courts because of the change in their jurisdic-in order to prevent favoritism, to create corporations by general laws, and thus to afford to all who wished it the opportunity of assuming a corporate charter in accordance therewith. The result was a great increase in the number of the corporations and the assumption of the corporate form by seven-eighths of the active capital in the country. The great saving in the cost of production brought about by mechanical inventions and the organization of capital worked incalculable benefit to the public, but the necessary price of it under our system of free right of contract and inviolate right of private property was a division of the profit between those who were to consume the product and those whose minds conceived and whose hands executed the work of production. The total wealth of the whole country was thus enormously increased, but of the increase more was necessarily accumulated in some hands than others. Be tion with respect to the negro race, affords an of those who had been abolitionists at the north. In the general prosperity caused by the revolu tion of methods of production, captains of industry amassed fabulous fortunes, and the aggregations of capital under corporate management became so great as to stagger the imagination. The last two generations have witnessed a marvelous material development. It has been effected by the organization and enforced corporation of simple elements that for a long time previous had been separately used. The organi- "In the mad rush for money which previous zation of powerful machines of delicate devices successes had stimulated, it is not to be wonby which the producing power of one man was dered at that some of the accumulated wealth increased fifty or one hundred fold was, howwas corruptly used to secure undue business adever, not the only step in this great progress. vantages from legislative and executive sources, The aim of all material civilization in its hard and that many of the political agencies of contest with nature was, and is, the reduction the people became tainted. The impersonal of the cost of production, for thereby each character of corporations afforded a freedom man's day's work nets him more of the com- from that restraint in the use of money for poforts of life. Within the limits of efficient ad- litical corruption, which is often present when ministration the larger amount to be produced the would-be briber is an individual. Men of at one time and under one management, the good repute, with complaisance and intentional less the expense per unit. Therefore, the aggre- I ignorance, acquiesced in the use of corporate 200 RICHARD HEPARD, ATT Rooms 37, to corporate ors THE ALBANY LAW JOURNAL. legislators and councilmen in the deprivation of vested rights. In all such cases adopt such methods in their indibusiness. The enormous increase in bare pterest, when they would not wish resort is at once had to the inferior Federal court, by the corporations injuriously affected, to test the validity of the State's action, and it not infrequently happens that it becomes the duty of such court to declare the legislation involved void, and to enjoin State officers from seizing or injuring the property of corporations under its provisions. Such a decision in a corporation-hating community at once tends to mark the Federal courts as friends and protectors of corporations. ALCorporate wealth furnished the means of cor- "The real abuses, however, find their chief cause in political corruption, which is wholly beyond the power of the Federal courts to prevent or eradicate. Too frequently the popular impulse is to remedy or punish the evil by giving judgment against the great corporations in every case, no matter what the particular issue or facts are, on the ground that the corporation has probably increased its capital or attained It is hardly its success by corrupt methods. necessary to point out that this mode of punishment by forfeiture and chance distribution cannot be countenanced in a court of justice, however meritorious the cause of complaint The bribery of upon which it is founded. which many corporations are guilty is the most difficult of legal proof, and the crimes of this character are usually committed against the State, so that Federal courts have no cognizance of them. Another evil has been the injustice done to the real owners of the corporate property by the reckless and dishonest management of its nominal owners. The great liberality of the general laws for the formation of corporations and the entire failure to exercise any stringent visitorial powers over them have enabled the active promotors and managers of large enterprises carried on at a distance from the homes of the real owners to increase the corporate indebtedness and capital stock so far beyond any fair valuation of their property as to put the entire control of it in the hands of the holders of worthless stock, who have nothing at stake in the corporate success. The real owners, the The combinations known as trusts are now bondholders, are at the mercy of this irrespon- before the State courts, and I have no doubt sible management till insolvency comes. The from their decisions that legislation which exreckless business methods which such an irre- perience will suggest, both by way of supervissponsibility and lack of supervision invite, ion over corporations and by criminal laws, will create an unhealthy and feverish competition in suppress much of their evil methods. It is setevery market, wholly unrestrained by the tled, and rightly settled, that the National Govnatural caution which the real owner of a busi-ernment can do nothing in this direction except ness must feel. The concern is kept going with no more hope of legitimate profit, but simply to pay large salaries, or to favor unduly some other enterprise in which the managers have real interest. "The prejudice against corporations has led resident and non-resident. It takes the form of where interstate commerce is directly affected by them, and not where in the course of their operation interstate commerce may occur as an incident." William Wirt Howe, Esq., of New Orleans, who followed Judge Dillon as the Storr's Lecturer at Yale university, read a paper. A part was: 'It seems reasonably certain that the class of writers who persist in denying the obligation of England to the Roman system are contradicted S by analogy, by history and by high authority. If we consider the English language we find that a very large and important part of it has manifestly been derived from the Latin, either directly or indirectly. Take, for instance, the name of our own society, the American Bar Association. There is not a word in it of British or Anglo-Saxon origin. All have come from Italy or France, and may be said to be of Latin origin. The question is not whether the civil law, so called, is the basis of jurisprudence in England in the same sense as in Germany or Louisiana, but what have been its historical relations and its effect in the evolution of the law of England. Down to the times long after Blackstone the civil law was associated in the minds of many Englishmen with a system that was thought to be hostile and alien to the liberties of England. "From the time Julius Caesar landed in Britain, 54 B. C., and until the legions returned, about the year 450 A. D., a period of about 500 years, the Roman republic, as it styled itself, embraced the civilized world and all that there was therein of art science and philosophy. Its jurisprudence was like the sunlight, diffusing itself in all directions, and could not be excluded from even those places which attempts might have been made to darken. The Romans governed Britain, and the long period known as the Roman Peace gave an opportunity for the arts of peace. Agriculture and commerce were largely developed; cities, towns, villas, theaters, roads were built. Young Britons of good family were encouraged to travel and study abroad. There was a constantly developing civilization. Is it rational to suppose that such a people lived without any jurisprudence? "The British Church was represented in all courts, highly educated both by books and foreign travel. By the end of the fifth century it had its own edifices, intercourse with Rome, and even with Palestine. To every churchman Rome represented the seat of everything that was great in jurisprudence as well as power. The kings and nobles were unlearned and the clergymen monopolized the learning of the period. They knew the Roman law and its offspring, the canon law. They stood for peace and justice at a time when violence was common. If there was to be a contract drawn up, a deed or charter to be framed, a will to be prepared, they alone, as a rule, could do the work. Many of them became statesmen, and many of them were judges. Secular and ecclesiastical courts were not separated, and the two jurisdictions were hardly distinguished. The bishop sat in the county court and the church claimed for him a large share in the direction of even secular justice, and the claim was fully allowed by princes who could not be charged with weakness. In the eleventh century, we find that the Normans brought with them 'the power of organization, the sense of law and method, the genius of enterprise.' It was Stephen Langdon, an Englishman, educated at Rome, who produced to the constitutionalists the charter of Henry I, on which their demands should be based and from which Magna Charta sprang. During the most formative period of the English law the churchmen stood for some kind of educated justice. The custom of the King's Court was the custom of England and became the common law, and if the King's Court was of men whose chief culture was Romano-canonical the syllogism seems complete and the conclusion inevitable. "Another source of influence is found in the middle of the twelfth century, when Vacarious, imported from Italy by Theobald of Canterbury, began to teach law at Oxford, and that school had a flourishing school of both civil and common law. "We are all familiar with the curious association in England of probate and admiralty, and there can be no dispute that the principal rules of both systems are Roman through and through. The principles and practice of the English court of chancery are largely derived from Roman sources, modified in some respects by the canon law. It is conceded by such writers as Cruise that the devices in conveyancing known as fines and common recoveries were derived from the civil law. They were in principle the in jure cesso of the Roman law, which was a fictitious surrender in court of property resulting in a judgment settling the title in the person in whom it was desirable to have it settled. It will hardly be contended that such refined method of conveyancing could have been de |