mitted to show his former character, or to prove his guilt of other crimes merely for the purpose of raising a presumption that he who would commit them would be more apt to commit the crime in question. In People v. Sharpe, 107 N. Y. 427, the doctrine is dwelt upon and the cases cited upon the subject collected.

In the Department of Experimental Psychology at the recent meeting of the Medico-Legal Congress a number of interesting papers were read by distinguished authors on the subject of Hypnotism, which to-day is receiving more attention from lawyers, as well as from the public, than any other subject connected with the medical and legal sciences. Judge Abram H. Dailey, of Brooklyn, read a paper on "The Hypnotic Power, What it is," and Clark Bell, Esq., who was later on elected president of the Medico-Legal Society, read a paper on Hypnotism and Crime;" while Mrs. Sophia McClellan read a paper which had for its subject, "Psyche-Physiological Mechanism." Judge A. L. Palmer, of the Province of New Jersey, presided over the deliberations of this department of the congress, and Professor W. X. Sadduth, formerly Dean of the University of Minnesota, and now living in Chicago, read a paper on "Hypnotism and Crime." His paper was, in part, as follows:

The wide difference of opinion regarding the relationship of hypnotism and crime existing in this country and Europe has long been

a matter of comment. Prominent authorities on each side of the water, with but few exceptions, reject the idea of the possibility of successful criminal suggestions under ordinary circumstances, while many European writers freely admit and deplore the supposed possible misuse of this new-old force for criminal ends, although they cite no well-authenticated cases to prove their fears.

In order to intelligently discuss the subject, it is essential that we first inquire briefly into the nature of hypnosis. In its simpler manifestation it is a modified form of natural sleep, artificially induced, but in its more complete form it compares to the abnormal condition of natural sleep known as somnabulism. It is also the natural precursor of ordinary sleep. This is proved by the fact that subjects, after being

thoroughly hypnotized, if left to themselves, even for a brief space of time, will pass into a natural sleep, from which they awaken as from a nap, with all the expressions of drowsiness and temporary loss of memory as to surroundings and events that are evidenced by persons who have slept under ordinary circumstances. This fact necessitates that, in order to keep in touch with this subject, the operator must keep up a continual line of suggestions, otherwise he

loses control of the subject.

Notwithstanding his apparent loss of consciousness, a person in the hypnotic state is He is perfectly conscious of his condition. possessed of what is termed a double or dual, consciousness. He knows full well that he is doing the bid of another, but so long as the suggested acts do not shock his sense of propriety and come within the bounds of physical possibility, he will attempt their performance because he realizes that he is playing a part in an experiment, and is anxious to add his mite to the sum total of knowledge upon the subject. Nevertheless he is as free a moral agent to follow the dictates of conscience as he is in the waking state. He obeys only in so far as the suggested acts do not antagonize the moral standard he set up for himself; any suggestions that seriously affront his moral nature, if persisted in, will cause him to awaken.

Criminal or immoral suggestions made to a moral subject meet the auto-suggestion arising from his own conscience, and confusion is created in his mind. His indecision is only too apparent in the helpless expression on his face and his incapacity to organize any line of procedure in the premises and simply remains passive, that is, does nothing.

While it is true that post-hypnotic suggestions can be given to a susceptible subject in the hypnotic state to be carried out at some future time, yet the suggested act or acts must be in harmony with his own idea at the time they are given, as any suggestion given in the hypnotic state that would be repugnant to the subject in the waking state would invariably fail of consummation.

The question of successful hypnotic criminal suggestion turns, therefore, on a point of morals, even as it does in the waking state, and with a lessened possibility of success, for the reason

that in the hypnotic state a subject seems to lose to a greater or less degree his sense of material relationship, and cupidity and passions are less usually appealed to. The mind is passive, not active, and the operator must supply the motive and the physical incentive as well. The tendency to pass into a condition of natural sleep is ever present, and the close relationship to natural sleep is a point of great interest. Prof. James of Harvard says that "we all probably pass through the hypnotic state in going to sleep every night."

To define hypnotism simply as "induced sleep" is, however, to limit the condition; it is that and more. It is a condition in which the individual is oblivious to outward surroundings, in the main, but quickened in power of susceptibility to suggestions from the hypnotizer. It is a concentration of the mind of the individual upon some one line of thought or phenomena to the exclusion of all others. It is not essential that the subject should present all phenomena of sleep; the eyes may remain open, and the person be in a complete hypnotic state, and obey all direct commands with decision, and yet be wholly unconscious as to what has happened when he is roused to consciousness. The mind may be compared to an automatic, self-registering machine that receives ideas, tabulates and carries out motor impulses that are suggested to it through the senses for the sensorium to receive and apply the suggestion; however, the latter must be of a character that is within the understanding of the individual. To give command in foreign tongue is to invite failure, and the suggestion of thoughts to a hypnotic subject, foreign to his ideas of right and wrong, will meet with equally negative

results.

Constant repetition may, as in all things, educate the individual in the premises, but, as we have said before, it is very difficult to overcome preconceived ideas. The personality of the individual is not materially altered in hypnosis; it is only modified, partially dominated, if you please, by the will of another for the time being, but only so far as his own ideas will break the relationship and arouse the individual from the hypnotic state. Faith in the ability and the good intentions of the operator is an essential element in hypnotism, and the

sensational stories that go the rounds of cheap literature regarding theft, arson, and murder committed in the hypnotic state are the creations of diseased or ignorant minds.

In considering this subject it must be remembered that there are people in this world who are negatively honest, virtuous, and generally well-behaved-people who are good because they have never been tempted to be bad. Such persons tempted either in the waking or hypnotic state might or would fall simply because they had no indwelling force of character. Such persons are only safe in a cloister or behind prison bars.

Many years' experience with use of hypnotism in laboratory and clinic, upon widely differing classes of subjects, makes me feel safe in saying that under all conditions when the subject is capable of carrying out a criminal suggestion he is sufficiently conscious of his own volition to decide whether he will carry out the suggestions or not. This being the case, he goes ahead law of intent and becomes a "particeps criminis," law of intent and becomes a "party criminis," an accessory before and after the fact," and should be held equally guilty with the instigator of the crime. A criminal he surely is, but hardly a "criminal character" in the sense in which I have been accustomed to use the term.

Dr. William Lee Howard of Baltimore, says that "in his experiments he has drawn the line at arson and murder." I have gone one step further and repeatedly attempted to induce subjects to make felonious attacks on persons under the most aggravating circumstances without securing the least indication of obedience.

For instance, while my subjects would stab right and left with paper daggers, yet when a real dagger was placed within their hands they have invariably refused to use it, even when suffering the greatest provocation. I account for this on the ground that a person in the active hypnotic state possesses a dual existence, and is perfectly conscious of what he is doing. In most cases he will carry out the expressed wish of the operator, provided it does not affront his sense of propriety or seriously cross his ideas of right and wrong.

For several years I have made use of hypnotism in surgical practice, and my experience

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in this direction leads me to the conclusion that hypnosis is a mental state rather than a physical condition, such, for instance, as ether and chloroform narcosis. Time and again 3 have I had patients who responded to all the tests of hypnotic anaesthesia before the operation, when called upon to face the actual ordeal came out of the hypnotic state, the fear of the operation being a stronger suggestion than that of the operator, consequently the subject awakened, obedient to the law of self-preservation, which is never set aside, even in the profoundest hypnotic state.

In conclusion, let me reiterate my basal proposition: Given a criminal or immoral subject and a hypnotist of like character, and criminal or immoral results may be obtained. But shall a natural force of greater potency be condemned simply because it may be occasionally misused?

Many comments have been made by us in relation to the matter of international copyright which has been largely discussed during the past year, and which is a matter that becomes of more and more interest yearly to publishers and lawyers in the United States. A very excellent article appears in the LAW JOURNAL to the following effect:

The issue presented to the imperial government in connection with Canadian copyright is not merely of constitutional but also of international importance. It affects the relations of the imperial government to the United States in an especial manner, and to all the powers signatory to the Berne convention generally, though less directly. Nevertheless, the Canadian Minister of Justice presents the question of Canadian copyright as if it were merely one of constitutional law and practice, as between the local Legislature of Canada and the imperial ministry. Canadians, the minister said, must know whether the unanimous will of the Dominion House of Commons was to be respected by Her Majesty's officers in London.

The Canadian Copyright Bill of 1889, from which the assent of the imperial government has hitherto been withheld, proposes in effect to abrogate the Berne convention of 1885, so far as Canada is concerned. The purpose of that convention, to which Canada formally adhered, is to secure copyright in all the States

to an author who has already obtained copyright in one. The Canadian bill proposes to enact that unless the author registers the book at Ottawa on its first publication, and reprints it in Canada within one month, he forfeits his property in the product of his brain. Any Canadian publisher is then entitled by this bill to print the author's book without his consent, to publish it in any form and at any price. An illusory tribute to the right of the despoiled author is tendered in the shape of a ten per cent royalty on sales. The practical effect of this would merely be that the author would have a right to sue a Canadian publisher, as no sum of money need be paid before publication.

Setting aside, for the moment, consideration of the rights of the author implied in the transactions contemplated by the bill, it will be seen that by no constitutional fiction can the imperial government escape international responsibility for its assent. Its assent must be given, and the Imperial Copyright Act of 1866, which applied the Berne Convention to British dominions, must be repeated as far as Canada is concerned. Once this step were taken, the United States would be obviously within its right in denouncing the copyright agreement with Great Britain. For that agreement was made on the assumption that the status quo on the British side was to be maintained unimpaired. If the imperial government is now to sanction a reversion to the state of free piracy in books on the part of the only serious rival to the United States in the publishing trade, then the United States can, and most probably will, declare that an essential condition of the copyright agreement has been violated. That this is no imaginary result may be seen from the emphatic declarations of the American press.

As regards the Powers signatory to the Berne convention, they certainly would be entitled to regard the authority of that international compact as weakened should the British government, which played so great a part in its negotiation, now declare in effect that the principles invoked to secure adhesions to the convention are to be set at naught on behalf of the trade interests of Canadian printers. The case is worse, as regards the Canadian share in this transaction, from the fact that a protocol of the Berne convention gave Canada and other

British colonies twelve months within which to signify a wish not to be parties. Canada, far from denouncing, formally adhered to the convention; and by that adherence has placed the imperial government in the position of being obliged to take part in any Canadian repudiation of the international duties imposed by the convention on all British communities.

The constitutional arguments adduced on the side of the Canadian bill, and on which the advocates of the bill take their stand, hardly require a moment's consideration. It is said that as the British North America Act of 1867 conferred on the Dominion Parliament powers of legislating on Canadian copyright, therefore, the bill of 1889 should be sanctioned by the imperial government without demur. To this be it sufficient to reply that the Colonial Laws Validity Act of 1865, while enabling colonial legislatures to pass laws contrary to the common law of England, expressly reserved the authority of an imperial statute to override local legislation; and this, of course, has always been the constitutional theory. The imperial statute of 1886, therefore, presents an inseparable bar to the validity of the Canadian bill. But, apart from this, the Canadian government, by a deliberate act, accepted the Berne convention, and so has entailed on the imperial government the responsibility of sanctioning an act of which it disapproves, should Canada be allowed to impair the British acceptance of the convention.

To the constitutional .argument recently put forward by a Canadian minister-that Canadians are entitled, if they choose, to misgovern themselves it is enough to point out that no theory of home rule can sustain the proposition that Canada has a right, not merely to misgovern itself, but to involve the imperial government and British citizens generally in international responsibility.

The judges of the Court of Appeals appointed Edmund H. Smith, of Albany, as State reporter, to succeed the late Hiram E. Sickles. The salary of the office is $5,000, and the perquisites are said to be equally as large.

Mr. Smith is the son of Judge John C. Smith, of Canandaigua, and was born in 1848. He was educated in Canandaigua academy, Hobart

college, and Columbia college law school. He was admitted to the bar in New York city in 1872, and was thereafter an assistant United States attorney for the southern district of New York under Colonel George Bliss, district attorney. Since then Mr. Smith has had an extensive experience in law reporting, especially as editor of the Central Reporter.

During the existence of the second division of the Court of Appeals Mr. Smith filled the office of remittitur clerk, and since the dissolution of that body has been connected with the office of the clerk of the Court of Appeals.

Mr. Smith's appointment gives great pleasure to the many persons who are thrown into daily contact with him. He vacates a $2,000 position in the clerk's office upon assuming his new duties.

It may be

It is a matter of more than passing interest to contrast the amount of legislation passed by the recent Parliament in England with that of the New York Legislature of 1895. surprising to know that only fifty statutes were in 1895, while 1045 were passed by the Legisturned out by the two parliaments in England lature of 1895 and signed by the Executive, and

many more prevented from becoming laws by session. "Amongst the forty-four (passed by the action of the governor at the close of the the old Parliament) the more important are the Factories and Workshops Act, the Summary Jurisdiction Act, the Married Women Act, the Mortgagees' Legal Costs Act (materially affecting solicitors), the Friendly Societies Act, the Law of Distress Amendment Act, the Judicial Committee Act (which chiefly concerns the colonies), the Shop Hours Act, and the Market Gardeners' Compensation Act. Both Parliaments have happily refrained from passing as local and personal acts statutes which ought to have been passed as public general acts, as was so notably the case last year in the passing of the London Building Act and the Thames Conservancy Act." No act of Parliament of 1895 is of more interest to American lawyers then the Mortgagees' Legal Costs Act, which allows a solicitor advancing money to his client on mortgage to charge for the preparation of the mortgage as if he were not his client's solicitor. The cases which necessitated this act will be found noticed by Mr. Justice Kekewich in

Eyre v. Wynn-Mackenzie, 63 L. Jour. Rep. Chanc. 239. 'It is now well settled' said the learned judge in that case, 'that a solicitormortgagee cannot charge profit costs as against his client for business done in connection with the mortgage, and I need not refer in detail to the cases which were cited in argument. Settled or not settled, the rule was, we believe, a comparatively recent one, and is one of the most unjust instances of judge-made law which has come under our notice. The new act, which came into operation on July 6 last, the 1- date of the royal assent, is partly retrospective and partly not. Section 1, which provides that a solicitor-mortgagee may recover his charges just as if he were not a solicitor, applies only to mortgages made after the commencement of the act. Section 2, which provides that a solicitor-mortgagee may recover costs for subsequent business in relation to the mortgage, is very properly retrospective."

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afford some aid in solving some of the problems as to legislation on the subject of corporations, and changes that are pressingly needed in the law regulating them.

This is an age of corporations. It is estimated that there is to-day four-fifths of the entire wealth of this country in their hands. They have become the instrumentalities of almost all business enterprises, not merely in the department of transportation and the operations of public uses, but in agriculture, in land-holdings, and in ordinary mechanical, manufacturing and mercantile business.

were

Legislation began, under the Constitution, with a careful specification of the purposes for which corporations should be organized. These section 3235 was amended so as to authorize corposteadily increased, until by Act of April 6, 1894, rations for all purposes, except for carrying on professional business, but limiting corporations for buying and selling real estate to twenty-five years. Under this authority, there is no conceivable business purpose, from the manufacture of a pin to the construction of a transcontinental railway, from the sale of Ayer's Pectoral or Thompson's eye water to the largest mercantile establishment in the world, from putting in use the patent of the "hump hook and eye" to an ocean steamer, from a flour mill at home to a mine in South Africa or a plantation in the Sandwich Islands. They are used for every purpose and in all lands, and indeed upon all seas. It would be a curious inquiry to examine the variety of corporation certificates on file in the office of the Secretary of State.

Along with this rapid development of corporations in every business use have grown up abuses that the interests of society imperatively demand. shall be reformed; and the measures that may be required for this purpose call for the most careful examination with the view to preserve what may be nseful, as well as to correct what may be mischievous, in the use of corporations.

The laws of this State, enacted since the adoption of the Constitution of 1815, have been, in a great degree, acts provided from time to time to meet new emergencies, or to answer special demands, and, as a consequence of such fragmentary work, the legislation, as it now stands, is an insufficient and unharmonious patch-work; a mottled and ill

assorted commulation of laws and uncndments,

made without reference to previous legislation, with out care or guard against abuses, devised to promote some new business scheme, or to escape some inconvenient restrictions. One interest only has been consulted in their passage-that of the special project to be served. No plan has been pursued, no principle has been followed, and, in a large measure, the general interest of society has been disregarded.