the rights and privileges which the bill was intended to secure, are rights and privileges of the citizen as such, and not of citizens of the United States, and, therefore, not within the legislative scope of congress.

A law has been passed by the Tennessee legislature to facilitate the dispatch of business accumulated in the Supreme Court of that State. It provides for the appointment of a commission of three persons who shall act as a special court in hearing causes pending in the Supreme Court at Jackson. Only such cases as the parties thereto shall agree to submit to the commission, shall come within its jurisdiction. It is in fact a court of arbitration; but is not intended to be permanent. The commission is to report to the Supreme Court, and its conclusions are to stand as the judgments of the court. The arbitrators are to have the same salaries as the judges of the Supreme Court; and they are to exercise all the ordinary powers of a regular court. The opinions of the commission are not, however, to be published in the reports of the decisions of the Supreme Court; and such opinions are declared to have no other effect than to determine the particular cause wherein rendered, and are not to be deemed of any authority as precedents.

The United States Revised Statutes are now ready for distribution. The law directing the publication of the statutes authorizes their sale, by the secretary of State, at ten per cent advance on the cost of the paper, press-work and binding. The government printer has fixed the price at $3.71 per copy, and it is understood that the volumes can be obtained at that price. The law book dealers will, of course, charge an advance on the government price; but the secretary of State announces that he is prepared to furnish copies to any one at the government price. Copies are furnished to the departments of government and members of congress, free. The whole profession will be gratified that the United States Revised Statutes are at last printed and accessible.

resorted to, and is objectionable for obvious reasons. Study in an attorney's office, according to the writer, is little better, so far as instruction is concerned; but study in a law school is declared to be under the most favorable circumstances in respect to the aid and instruction and encouragement which the student needs. The writer has a high opinion of the value of moot courts, and of the advantages attendant upon the commingling of many persons in a school of law. The article closes with the statement, that while "we regard them" (law schools) "as far from perfect in their appointments and modes of teaching and discipline, we regard them as in all things an improvement and advance upon any prior mode of teaching law, or preparation for the bar.”

Before the adjournment of congress the final report of the committee on expenditures, in the Department of Justice, was presented by Mr. Sener of Virginia. The report is a very elaborate document, and, as far as can be ascertained at present, the committee has done its work faithfully, thoroughly and much more expeditiously than any previous similar committee. By the exposure of the frauds in the western district of Arkansas, the expenditures per year have been reduced from $321,000 to $84,000. The expenditures in five other districts have also been investigated. The report reviews the entire subject of the expenditures of the judiciary department, and recommends the consolidation of districts and the discontinuance of many of the assistant district attorneys. This committee initiated and secured the passage of statutes which will save considerable sums to the government; and for this service, together with the results of their investigation, it is entitled to great praise. The department of justice certainly needed investigation.

In the case of Mrs. Ann Eliza Young, who has been seeking a divorce for a long time from Brigham Young, it seems that the ground of the recent heavy allowance of alimony by the court was a decidedly technical one. In granting the motion for alimony, the court declared that, if it should appear in evidence that the parties knowingly entered into a polygamous marriage, no divorce would be granted, for the reason that there was no legal marriage. But it was not the province of the court to anticipate what would be proved; and as there was a prima facie case in favor of the plaintiff, the court would allow temporary alimony and expenses pending trial. It is generally understood that the marriage will be declared illegal and that no permanent alimony will be allowed; but the case has been pending many months, and as the alimony already granted relates back to the time of the commencement of the case, Mrs. Ann Eliza is making a fortune out of the liti

NOTES OF CASES.

In Hoadley v. Northern Transportation Company, 115 Mass. 304, the liability of a common carrier as affected by conditions in the bill of lading was considered. A steam-engine was delivered to defendant for carriage under a bill of lading containing an exception against loss by fire. The engine was destroyed by fire, after delivery to defendant but before it was forwarded, and it was claimed that defendant negligently omitted to forward the engine. Upon this point the judge who tried the case charged that defendant would be liable notwithstanding the exemption in the receipt, if it negligently detained the engine after it ought to have been sent on, so that it was exposed to the fire and destroyed. But the Supreme Court took a different view of the case, and Colt, J., who delivered the opinion, said: "The defendant insists that the negligence alleged cannot be treated in law as the proximate cause of the loss. In actions of this description the injury complained of must be shown to be the direct consequences of the defendant's negligence. This is the only practical rule which can be adopted by courts in the administration of justice. * * * Applying these rules to the case at bar it is plain that the destruction of the goods by fire in the calamity which happened could not reasonably be anticipated as a consequence of the wrongful detention of them. The delay did not destroy the property, and there was no connection between the fire and the detention."

In Bradshaw v. Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company, 31 L. T. N. S. 847, the English Common Pleas considered the liability of a railroad company for consequential damages arising from injuries to a passenger. The passenger's injuries resulted in death about six months after the accident. The injuries had so disabled him that he had been prevented from attending personally to his business which had, in consequence, fallen off and become of less value It was held that the maxim "Actio personalis moritur cum persona" did not apply, and that the executrix of the deceased could recover from the railway company for the damage resulting to his estate from the payment of his doctor's bills, and the depreciation of his business by reason of his inability to attend to it. Grove, J., delivered an opinion in which he referred to the novelty of the action, and said that the ground of the action was that owing to the breach of a contract made with the testator in his life-time, his estate was injured in two respects; first, by the payment of his doctor's bill; and secondly by the loss occasioned to his business by his inability to attend to it. This was deemed a good ground of action. Upon the ques

tion whether the cause of action survived to the executrix, the judge said: "I see no reason why, because a man is killed and his estate damaged also,

his estate should lose compensation merely because he was killed, whereas he might have recovered the compensation if he had lived. In respect to the claim that the damage to business was too remote, it was said "the damages sought to be recovered here are immediate and by no means remote. A railway company must be supposed to have it in their contemplation that if a passenger be injured, his busi ness, if he have any, will necessarily suffer." Denman, J., also delivered an opinion stating the question to be "can an action be supported for damage to estate of a testator flowing from the breach of a contract made with the testator in his life-time ? * * * Undoubtedly this is the first case in which such a proposition has been distinctly laid down." The judge further said: "The natural consequences of a breach of contract are the subject of damages, and one of the natural consequences of a man of business being killed by a railway accident is, that his business should suffer. A contract about a chattel is different from a contract with a specific individual, and the defendants took upon themselves the risk of having to recoup the estate when they engaged to carry the testator."

In Reg. v. Burney, 31 L. T. N. S. 828, the Court of Queen's Bench considered the question whether a highway ceases to be such after it is rendered a cul de sac by the erection of buildings authorized by act of parliament. The defendant obstructed the way and was indicted therefor. The jury found that the part of the way where defendant's obstructions were had ceased to be of any public utility. The case came before the full bench on questions reserved. Blackburn, J., said: "The question is whether the legal abolition of a thoroughfare has the effect of rendering that part of it, beyond what is actually stopped, no longer a highway when it is useless to the public. There are dicta of Patterson, J., and other judges that a cul de sac may be a highway, and there is authority that new openings may be made into a highway from the adjoining lands. Although this piece of unused road may be of little value, its obstruction cannot be absolutely no possible injury to any member of the public." The judge further said that the finding of the jury was an important consideration in deciding upon the punishment of defendant, but it could not deprive the prosecutor of his right to judgment. Lush, J., also said that when a highway is stopped by act of parliament the public are not deprived of any more of their right than the statute expresses. In New York it may be regarded as settled that a cul de sac may be a highway. People v. Kingman, 24 N. Y. 559; Wiggins v. Tallmadge, 11 Barb. 457; Hickok v. Trustees of Plattsburgh, 41 id. 135. But whether it is a highway or a private passage depends upon the user or dedication, and is to be decided by the jury. Thompson on Highways, page 5.

THE STABILITY OF THE LAW.

It is a quite common saying that nothing is certain in law. To those who entertain this idea, we recommend the consideration of an incident that recently took place in England. We refer to the reentry by the reversioner of a lease of lands for a thousand years upon the expiration of the full term. This is a circumstance that could not have occurred in this country, for the very good reason, among others, that we are not old enough to render it possible, but also for the reason that among us the notion is quite prevalent that when one has used another's property for a good while it becomes his own. This idea is at the bottom of all our anti-rent disturbances. The man who thinks there is nothing certain in law, is quite apt also to think, that if he has for many years occupied a large farm belonging to another, for a rent which in the prolonged tenure of the occupancy has become ridiculously small, the farm ought to belong to him. Our national obligations, too, rest rather lightly upon our conscience. Already there is a large class of our citizens who are seeking ways and means of repudiating our national debt of only ten or fifteen years standing. It is indeed very difficult for us to realize the expiration of a thousand years' lease. There are leases of a thousand years outstanding in New England, we believe, but as they will continue to stand out until about the year of grace, 2700, we need not conjecture nor give ourselves much concern about them. When they fall in, New England will deserve a different name, and some other person than ourselves will doubtless note the incident for this journal. Even now we regard the one hundred year leases of Trinity church, some of which are about expiring, with a sort of awe and a self congratulation that we allow the tenant of the fee to have his own again.

But to return to this English lease. It was executed in the reign of Alfred, that great and good man and wise law-giver, who did so much to raise his people out of the slough of degradation into which years of subjection had dragged them, and to establish them on a basis of order and self-respect; who, "in the midst of a cruel war, of which he did not see the beginning nor live to see the end, did more for the establishment of order and justice than any other prince has been known to do in the profoundest peace." Its execution bears date two centuries before the Norman conquest. When one looks back across this gulf of a thousand years, it almost staggers human belief to credit the incident. Through what vicissitudes of human history has this document survived! What changes, revolutions, conquests, has it witnessed! What else has survived the wreck of time? Westminster Abbey is called venerable, but it is four hundred years younger than this document. While the contract is couched in a language which none but curious scholars are now conversant with, the judgment of re-entry is ex

pressed in a national tongue thrice changed since Alfred. Human memory is racked to recall the succession of kingly houses which have ruled Great Britain - Plantagenet, York, Lancaster, Stuart, Hanover forty monarchs since Alfred. In regard to many of these rulers history is engaged in conjecture;- was Richard really a cruel tyrant, or a courteous gentleman and good king; was Henry Eighth a monster of jealousy or a considerate and fond husband; did Mary of Scots really write those damaging letters to Bothwell, and was she really a party to the murder of her husband; - how mythical these characters and how doubtful the events of their times have already become! The parties to this instrument belonged to a barbarous, abject, cruel, and superstitious race a few savages, struggling for existence against exterior enemies and internal dissension; while the reversioner of to-day

is of the richest, most enlightened and most powerful people on earth; who rule the seas; whose language is spoken by forty millions of descendants in a world three thousand miles distant, and undiscovered until six centuries after Alfred; and whose councils and influence govern the world from the Hebrides to India, from Australia to California and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This contract was entered into seven centuries before Shakspeare, the acknowledged king of universal literature, of whose achievements and very existence literary inquiry is even now beginning to raise grave doubts. Since those parties contracted, all the greatest facts of human history have occurred. Chivalry has risen and fallen; the discovery of the art of printing has set thought free and banished superstition; the invention of gunpowder has revolutionized warfare; the discovery of the telescope has enabled men to read the heavens and lift themselves a little nearer the Infinite; the new birth of classical learning has softened the hearts of men and refined their tastes by "the newly disseminated poetry of Virgil, the eloquence of Cicero, and the glowing narratives of Livy;" the reformation has given mankind the open Bible; the discovery of America has given liberty a home and asylum; and the abolition of American slavery has demonstrated that there is such a thing as a national conscience, and such a being as an overruling God. The race who enforce the contract are as much above the race to whom those belonged who made it, as it is possible for human thought to conceive, and yet the contract is respected and enforced as if it had been made only a generation ago. We dare say this incident does not excite much attention in England. Naturally it would be more remarked in a country like ours, whose beginning was only yesterday. But really it is an occurrence that speaks volumes for the constancy and integrity of the Anglo-Saxon race and for the stability of its laws. We venture to say that such an occurrence would be impossible, historically, legally, or morally,