MANUAL OF Corporate MANAGEMENT WITH FORMS. FULL AND CORRECT INFORMATION FOR THE CONDUCT AND TRANSACTION OF ALL CORPORATE BUSINESS. By T. CARL SPELLING, author of "Law of Private Corporations," etc. Pp. iii-xiii+15-479. San Francisco, Cal.: Bender-Chaquette Company, publishers and law-book dealers.

The book now under review is a very practical and useful one. It does not deal with the theories of any branch of the law, but is full of the information that a practitioner and an officer or member of a corporation needs. It is in the nature of a book on corporate practice, giving the forms in which charters, reports of officers, stock certificates, contracts, notes, etc., should be drawn up. In addition, the nature and various kinds of liability of stockholders, the duties of officers and their powers, are enumerated and discussed.

The author supports each principle of law laid down by many citations of cases, yet the value of the book lies in its being one of use rather than for reference.

S. G. S.

CASES IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA FROM 1885 TO 1889. By SYLVESTER B. SADLER. Ten volumes and Digest. Rochester: Lawyers' Co-operative Publishing Company.

1904.

To justify the appearance of these ten new volumes of reports we quote the author's preface:

The act of June 12, 1878, which provided in substance for the official publication of only such decisions of the Supreme Court as should be marked by the judge who wrote the opinion to be reported excluded from the series of State Reports many decisions. Some of these, rendered between 1881 and 1884. were offered to the profession by Pennypacker's Reports. Later, Walker's Reports appeared, containing some decisions of the period covered by Pennypacker's Reports, and others rendered, with two exceptions, before October, 1885. At this time the issue of the Central Reporter and the Atlantic Reporter was begun, publishing every current decision. Concurrently many cases were reported in the Weekly Notes of Cases. The thirteen volumes of the former ended with the summer of 1888; the first seventeen of the Atlantic, and the Weekly Notes of Cases, cover the period to March 28, 1889. From this date, under a new statute, the official reports contain every decision of the Supreme Court. Monaghan's Reports publish practically all the officially unreported decisions of that court which were rendered from October, 1888, to March, 1889.

'Considerably more than fifteen hundred decisions of the Supreme Court are to be found in the Central and Atlantic Reporters and Weekly Notes of Cases which do not appear elsewhere. These are spread through thirty-five volumes, intermingled with the decisions of other states, and for that reason are inconvenient of access and costly. It has seemed to the reporter that a service would be rendered to the profession by the collection of these cases into volumes of a reasonable size, obtainable at a moderate expense. This series of Reports contains all the unofficially reported decisions rendered during the period from October, 1885, to March, 1889, except such as are found in Monaghan's Reports. These have been omitted in order to prevent unnecessary duplication, the reports mentioned being in the hands of a considerable percentage of the profession.

"The Table of Cases in the accompanying Digest of this series of Reports shows the volume and page of the Central and Atlantic Reporters and the Weekly Notes of Cases in which these have been reported. Any case cited in any digest or elsewhere by reference to the Central and Atlantic, or to the Weekly Notes of Cases, during the period covered, can be found by aid of this table.

"In a footnote to each reported case a list of citations is given, showing where the decision has been subsequently referred to by any court in Pennsylvania.

"A feature which, it is believed, will add much to the utility of these Reports, is the notes, indicating other cases in which the same or cognate principles may be found, or which suggest judicial or statutory qualifications and modifications.

"For ease of reference each volume contains an index both to the cases and the notes therein; and a general index or digest of all the volumes accompanies the series."

The notes are

Scarcely any further word need be added. well prepared, and may in themselves prove valuable. Whether the publication of cases deemed unimportant by our judges is justified is a question of individual opinion. It is evident that the work has been done carefully, and will appeal to many who have been obliged during the past to search at large for such cases as are found here, and which they knew to exist.

E. H. B.

A TREATISE ON AMERICAN ADVOCACY. BY ALEXANDER H. ROBEINS. Pp. xiv+295. St. Louis: Central Law Journal Company, 1904.

This book will be greeted with pleasure by the profession in this country. The book is based upon the standard English treatise entitled "Hints on Advocacy," by Richard Harris,

though the writer has adapted it to American interests by adding much new matter conforming to American practice. In declaring the aim of the volume, the writer in his introduction, after speaking of the desire of the lawyer to reach the highest eminence of the profession, says "to assist him to do so is the highest purpose of this volume."

The work is a very careful treatise and gives in detail valuable instructions for the conduct of cases. Besides doing this, it contains chapters on "Legal Ethics" and "Compensation and Advertising," which seem very proper at this time when competition among lawyers is so keen.

Although the more experienced lawyer may find suggestions and advice in the book which may seem to him common-place, he can certainly peruse it with interest and advantage; to the younger practitioner, whose experiences are limited, the work should prove invaluable. E. L. G.

TABLES FOR Ascertaining the Present Value of VESTED AND CONTINGENT RIGHTS OF DOWER, CURTESY, ANNUITIES, AND OF OTHER LIFE ESTATES, DAMAGES FOR DEATH OR INJURY BY WRONGFUL ACT, NEGLIGENCE, OR DEFAULT, BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE CARLISLE TABLE OF MORTALITY. By FLORIAN GIANGUE and HENRY B. MCCLURE. Pp. x+ Fourth edition. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke Company.

1904.

Perhaps the purpose and advantage of these tables can be presented in no better way than by quoting an extract from the preface of the authors. They say: "The use of life and annuity tables for ascertaining the present value of vested and of contingent life estates, including inchoate rights of dower and curtesy, and as aids in ascertaining the amount of damages recoverable for injury or death from another's wrongful act, negligence, etc., is not infrequently alluded to by the courts in such a way as to show that such usage is thoroughly accepted and approved. . . . The ascertaining of the present value of contingent life estates, such as an inchoate right of dower or of curtesy, required not only the use of an annuity table showing the value of an annuity on a single life, but also of other annuity tables, showing the value of an annuity during the joint continuance of two lives, these being, in the case of dower and curtesy, the lives of the husband and wife; and, owing to the large number of possible combinations of ages of these two lives, these latter tables are necessarily quite voluminous and are to be found complete only in technical books that are scarce and expensive and which are practically

inaccessible to most persons who need them with reference to such matters." The present volume is designed to present the tables above referred to, so computed as to be readily used and understood and yet to be not so expensive as to exclude it from the average library.

The computations have been carried out with the utmost care on the basis, principally, of the Carlisle Mortality Table, though Jones's "On the Value of Annuities and Reversionary Payments," Chisholm's Commutation Table, and Lawton and Griffith's "Life Tables" have also been used for computing some of the tables. Bowditch's table, showing the present value of inchoate dower and curtesy, is given as also the expectancy of life as shown by the six leading mortality tables, with an explanation thereof and comments of courts thereon.

The fourth edition differs very little from the third edition of the book, which was published in 1894, though the notes of decisions as to the use of mortality tables have been rearranged. B. O. F.

NOTES ON RECENT LEADING ARTICLES IN LEGAL PERIODICALS.

THE AMERICAN LAWYER

Labor and the Law. James H. Torrey. So much that is superficial and without more foundation than is given by reiterated platitudes is written on the labor question, on strikes, lockouts, boycotts, and the open shop, that we are led to take up such an article as this in the hope of penetrating more deeply below the surface and getting at that deeper truth which must underlie any question which is capable of so deeply engaging the public attention. Mr. Torrey takes up all these questions one after another under their specific heads and gives us very much what we have so often had before. In the cases cited we are shown, no doubt, the general trend of the law as declared by the courts of the English-speaking countries, even though Mr. Torrey's first citation might lead us to suppose that we are getting encyclopedic law, and that in its latest and not most attractive form. The bitterness that the author deprecates in the conduct of the labor unions is so large an ingredient in his own article that he is scarcely consistent in his wholesale condemnation of it in the labor unions.

Sovereignty. Judge Robert G. Street. (Address before the Texas Bar Association.) This is a sufficiently deep subject even for so learned a body as the Bar Association of a sovereign state, and it is approached in a serious spirit. The author has not that light touch so characteristic of the modern public speaker; his sentences are almost ponderous in their effect upon the reader; yet, as the subject treated involves the most serious problems of our national life, our most vital constitutional questions, it is well that they should meet with no flippancy, no half-jesting treatment. Perhaps there is no better way of indicating the matter and manner of the paper than by quoting from the closing portion the following extract:

"I have rapidly sketched the rise and development of the doctrine of Sovereignty; have noted the various phases assumed by the social con

tract theory and its correlative, the consent of the governed; have directed your attention to the opposing views of the construction of the constitution of 1789; to the results of the war as disclosed by the amendments and their construction as established in the SlaughterHouse cases; to the renunciation of the rights of secession by the Southern states and to the historical vindication of their position on that issue. I have invited your attention to the limitation of individual right by the rights of society under new conditions of industrial life, and to the vast increase of our commercial interests emphasizing its national character, demanding constitutional changes that will conform our fundamental law to existing conditions and the requirements of future progress; I have brought before you the theories of an ethical and physical growth advanced by eminent political scientists and proclaimed superior to all constitutional obligations, and now, in the light of these considerations, I ask whether the adaptation of our organic law to modern progress can longer be safely postponed Can the legal profession afford to decline to recognize its peculiar obligation in this behalf?"

The Control of Public Utilities. William H. Bailey. Mr. Bailey takes up the regulation under legislative authority of the charges for the services rendered by those operating municipal public service industries. He first gives the cases which established the constitutionality of the regulation of rates by the legislature or by city councils and passes on to "trace the development of the law as declared by the courts on the subject of the regulation of rates and the limitations upon the power of the legislatures to fix rates, and of the courts to interfere with or set aside schedules." The early rule was that parties injured must resort to the legislature and not to the courts; this being taken to mean that the regulation was final and conclusive against both the company and the public. We are then shown the development of the law through the various phases of its growth to the present state, in which it is declared that the rates fixed by the legislative power must be reasonable, neither low enough to destroy the value of the property nor high enough to infringe upon the rights of the public; that the courts have jurisdiction to compel obedience to such reasonable schedules, and they will not nullify a rate unless it be so plainly unreasonable as to be practically a taking of private property for public use without proper compensation. The matter is dealt with in a manner which gives it both interest and value.

THE CANADIAN LAW REVIEW.-October.

The Kingdom of Canada. John S. Ewart, K.C. (Continued from September number.) Mr. Ewart ended his last paper with a protest against Canada being called a colony. He begins this second part with the words," But we are, nevertheless, a colony." He then goes on to examine the nature of the colony and to what extent it is "under authority." We are told that the "authority of the Canadian Parliament is a gift from a power outside of us, the gift of the Imperial Parlia ment." We are told that Canada is not sovereign," "not a nation but a colony." We then take up the Constitutional Limitations" and are shown that they are many and exceedingly important. Mr. Ewart's paper makes very interesting reading, but the most interesting reading is that found between the lines. In the irritation betrayed by the remark, "An American gets more re-pect in London than a colonist, and in my opinion he is entitled to it," we hear the truth he endeavors to persuade us does not exist. His whole argument is that of a man who will not tear himself away from the tradition that he is loyal to the faith of the