or to advise in respect to the disposal of the essays thus presented, and no premium will be awarded unless it shall be decided by the board that there is an offering of sufficient merit to command it.

The subscriber feels highly gratified and honored that the following distinguished gentlemen have kindly consented to serve as the board of judges, viz.

Hon. John J. Gilchrist, late Chief Justice of New Hampshire and present Chief Justice of the U. S. Court of Claims, Washington, D. C. Hon. John H. Clifford, New Bedford, ex-Governor of Massachusetts, and present Attorney General of that State.

Alexander H. Vinton, D. D., Boston, Mass.

Hon. Peter Cooper, New York city.

Nahum Capen, Esq., Dorchester, Mass.

In making this movement, I am actuated by motives of public good, to render distinguished ability and learning available to the nation and the world, with regard to a subject which has been surrounded by the accumulated difficulties of ignorance, fanaticism and doubt. Editors of the United States and of other countries, will not, I trust, deem it an improper request on my part, if I ask their kind co-operation, by giving to this communication such publicity, and such notice of it in their journals, as will tend to insure final success in the undertaking.

Boston, May 1st, 1856.

JOHN M. BARNARD,

No. 13 Temple street, Boston, Mass.

This is an important subject, and the examiners are certainly very competent. If the experiment succeeds, and legislation on this difficult and somewhat explosive subject is materially advanced and improved, as we hope it may be, through the liberality of Mr. Barnard, there are several topics on which we should like to suggest similar essays. For the present, we will content ourselves with promising in furtherance of the enterprise, to publish the rejected addresses" if they should prove as good and as brief as the old ones of the brothers Smith.

Notices of New Publications.

REPORTS OF DECISIONS OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. With Notes and a Digest. By B. R. CURTIS, one of the Associate Justices of the Court. Vols. 1 to 22. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1855-6.

Our readers must be already familiar with the general plan and many of them also, with the execution of this work, which has been extensivily noticed and justly commended throughout the country. The learned editor, moved, as he says in his preface, with the desire to make the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States more easily and cheaply accessible, has undertaken and carried out the severe task of revising all the reports of these decisions from the second volume of Dallas, to the seventeenth of Howard, correcting the citations, remodeling and very much condensing the statements of facts, and making

new marginal notes. How long the work has been in preparation we are not told, but it has been published very rapidly, and if any portion of the original editorial labor has been carried on at the same time, Judge Curtis has certainly earned the praise of untiring industry, even after all allowance is made for the able assistance which we know he has received.

He has earned much more. Some of the official reporters of the court, (as every body knows,) unfortunately for their own best interest and lasting reputation, as well as for their readers, had allowed their records to be overlaid with irrelevant matter of various kinds, so that the true points of a case were often effectually hidden under the heterogeneous mass, and sometimes not to be discovered even in the marginal notes.

Judge Curtis has retrenched all this, and in so doing, has brought those numerous and most valuable decisions within the compass of twenty-two volumes of ordinary size, including the digest, and within reach of the time and patience of the profession, and enabled the publishers to furnish them at a small fraction of the cost of the old reports. No man is better fitted for a work of this sort than Judge Curtis; his mind seizes and retains with the greatest facility the true legal points of a cause, while it rejects with an instinctive aversion, which the pressure of a very arduous practice while at the bar has ripened into a habit, all side issues and superfluities; there is not a particle of waste

about him.

For undertaking and accomplishing this great work, Judge Curtis is entitled to the thanks of every man interested (and who is not?) in the decisions of the highest court in the country. The plan is simple and yet original, and the execution vigorous and able. In reading the remarks which we shall make upon certain particulars both of conception and detail, our readers will understand that they are particulars only, and that we acknowledge and estimate the solid merits of the structure, although our duty require us to point out whatever mars, to our eye, its perfect finish and symmetry.

This understood, we proceed to say, that in our view the learned editor has retrenched a little too far, in omitting from the report of each case everything but the decision of the court and just so much narrative of facts as is essential to render the decisions intelligible. He has omitted some things which we like to see in a reported case, and in this respect his plan is not perfect. A case consists of much besides the opinion of the court; the history of the cause, the nature of the pleadings, the arguments of counsel, all the surroundings, in short, have often a most material bearing upon the decision and upon a due estimate of its precise weight and effect. Especially is this true of the arguments of the losing side, and of such arguments as were in times past not seldom addressed to that court. The art of a reporter is shown in knowing what to take and what to reject, and in reconciling the important but opposing considerations of economy of space, and cost, with all the fulness which may be essential to entire accuracy and completeness. Brevity, the soul of wit, is sometimes the parent of obscurity. In the present instance, to have given an abstract of the arguments of the losing party in the great leading causes, would have involved but a slight increase of work, perhaps no increase in the number of volumes, if the publishers had made all the volumes as large as the largest, and if the foot notes which, we should think, are superseded by the digest, were omitted. We regret that Judge Curtis's plan, (no doubt adopted after mature deliberation), had not been modified a little in this direction.

Passing to the details of execution, we find the marginal notes, in general, excellent, and the digest, which of course is made up of the marginals arranged under heads, a very valuable book. The heads are well chosen and the cross references very complete, though, by the bye, PRACTICE, a most fascinating head, is rejected by the best writers for fear of its insidious attractions. ERASURE AND INTERLINEATION Should, according to like usage, be ALTERATION OF INSTRUMENTS; CRIMINAL PROCEDURE is new, though, perhaps, deserving of introduction. The digest contains also, excellent tables of cases, and of the statutes of the United States, cited and expounded, filling nearly sixty pages, and of great value.

Some of the marginal notes might have been more elaborated. Our view of this matter, is, that marginals should express, briefly, the essence of the case, whenever there is a possibility of finding any, however difficult the search in some instances. We do not complain, however, that the Passenger cases, 7 Howard, 283, are expressed by this formula. "A State law, which requires the masters of vessels engaged in foreign commerce, to pay a certain sum to a State officer, on account of every passenger brought from a foreign country into the State, or before landing any alien passenger in the State, is inoperative, by reason of its conflict with the constitution and laws of the United States," because we fancy it would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer to make anything more out of them; but we do think, that inquirers might be further enlightened upon the important point of the decision in Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 11 Pet. 420, than by the following: "The rules of construction of public grants of franchises, explained and applied." And so of other similar instances. We protest also against the custom but too common with annotators, and from which the learned editor of these volumes has not escaped, of helping out a note thus :-" Held under the circumstances," or "circumstances under which;" we believe these phrases are improper in a marginal, and that none is perfect which does not give in brief some accurate idea of the circumstances in question. This mode of annotation leaves the student to do the commentator's work, and the harder the work in any instance, the less excusable in the master to leave it for the pupil to perform.

We end as we began, by acknowledging most gratefully that the volumes before us are a valuable contribution to our legal literature, and by repeating that they will take and keep the place of standard reports of the valuable decisions they record.

In taking leave of Judge Curtis, we must be allowed to express the hope, that he will consider seriously the expediency of giving to the profession some original treatise. A little too much of our law writing is done by gentlemen whose experience of practice has been very limited. Doubtless we are indebted for many of our best books, including the treatises of Blackstone and Abbott, to students who had not, when they composed them, been schooled in the practical conduct of affairs, but the writers whose works are of the greatest absolute value to the profession, among whom may be named Kent and Greenleaf, have recorded the results of study acted upon and systematized for use by practical suggestions, which experience only can give. We could mention several subjects upon which a treatise of this sort, and which Judge Curtis could admirably write, is wanted. It would be the work of years; and would not pay pecuniarily as well as some others of less intrinsic value, but the return, even in that form, would be considerable, and enough to reconcile an author to the additional labor which such a book would impose, when the reputation which it would be sure to bring in this reading and law-loving country, is added to the account.

REPORTS OF CASES ARGUED AND DETERMINED IN THE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS. By HORACE GRAY, Jr. Vol. 11. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1856.

This volume, of which we have been favored with the proof sheets, and which will appear by the time our readers receive this number of the journal, contains the cases of the fall terms of 1854, in Middlesex, Bristol, and Norfolk, and Essex, many of which are of much interest. It opens with the hard fought case of The Boston and Lowell Railroad Corporation v. The Salem and Lowell Railroad Company and others, in which it is held that § 12 of the act incorporating the former company, being the well-known monopoly given to this pioneer enterprise, that no other railroad should for thirty years be granted, between the same termini, constituted a valid contract, binding upon succeeding legislatures; that this right might be taken for public uses like any other property, due provision being made for compensation, but that the statute relied upon by the defendants did not authorize such a taking.

There are several decisions upon the law of corporations, so fertile a source of controversy, because of legislation, in our community. In Commonwealth v. Proprietors of the New Bedford Bridge, p. 339, it is held that a corporation may be indicted for misfeasance as well as for nonfeasance. In Hazen v. the Boston and Maine Railroad Company, p. 574, that the location is the conclusive and only evidence of the description of the land taken by a railroad company under its charter, and that in trespass against such a company by a land owner, over whose land they have built their road, the defendants are bound to show a due and proper taking of the locus. In Roxbury v. Boston and Providence Railroad Company, p. 460, an order of the county commissoners that the defendants should raise a highway so that it should cross over the track of the railroad, but not specifying the height or the grade, the mode or material of the structure, or the time within which the work was to be done, was held too vague to be enforced by a court of equity. At p. 84, we have the case upon the attempted annexation of Charlestown to Boston, which we hope will be duly conned by our law makers, We are glad to see that the question of burden of proof, which has contributed to entangle our jurisprudence a little, has received an excellent exposition in Crowninshield v. Crowninshield, p. 524, where it is held (overruling Brooks v. Barrett, 7 Pick. 94), that the burden of proving the sanity of the testator, remains throughout, upon the party offering the will, just like any other portion of his case.

We can now only glance further at one or two cases which invite remark. Scribner v. Fisher, p. 43, decides that where a note is in terms made payable within this State, a discharge under our insolvent law, is a bar, though the holder and original payee is a citizen of another State. Judge Metcalf feels constrained by the authority of Ogden v. Saunders, to dissent from the opinion of the majority of the court. And we think the profession will go with him. It has always been understood, and so, we may remark, is the note in Judge Curtis's edition of the reports, that the leading case covered the entire ground of contracts between citizens of different States, and held that the law of one State could not discharge such a contract, and however we may doubt the correctness of that decision, yet as it is binding on us, we cannot hold it either sound or wise to define it away, while it remains unreversed. In Wilson v. Webber, p. 558, it is held that

the right given by the practice act to file interrogations to the adverse party is confined to such facts as are material to the case set up by the interrogating party in his own pleadings; and the analogous rule of the English chancery courts is referred to, with approbation. We suppose this to be the correct rule, and it is not for us to reconcile it with the doctrine of Adams v. Porter, 1 Cush. 170, where it was held that the chancery doctrine in question was not in force here.

There are many other cases which we should be glad to refer to, but must content ourselves with recommending our readers to buy or borrow the book. The volume will increase Mr. Gray's already high reputation as a reporter. It is very thoroughly and ably edited, altogether the ideal of a book of reports. The marginals (the pons asinorum of reporters) express the law of the cases with brevity, distinctness and accuracy: just enough arguments are given, and withal there is such genuine economy of space, that the book contains one hunered and forty-one cases, a larger number we believe, than were ever before reported in a single volume of the reports of our State. It should be added that many of the cases, though entitled of the fall term 1854, when they were argued, were not decided until the following June.

GREENLEAF'S OVERRULED CASES. Revised Edition. Edited by John Townshend. New York: John S. Voorhies.

This belongs to a most useful class of books. Anything which assists us to an accurate determination of the weight to be given to authorities is of great value. And the fact that the work has passed through three previous editions, as we learn from the title page of this, evinces that it is used. We are informed that upwards of fifteen hundred cases have been added by the present compiler. Much as the book has swelled from the modest duodecimo which Mr. Greenleaf put forth, there is still room for a further increase, or rather there are more cases, if room can be found for them. Mr. Townshend has not, and we presume would not affirm that he had, collected, all the instances of overruled cases. We regret that he could not have had the aid of the valuable manuscript notes of a late learned, and an able living jurist, in editions of the work in this city.

His additions will be useful, but we cannot speak of his labors as complete, (nor if we may judge ex pede,) as always distinguished by that neat correctness which every author should require of himself, even if his readers are content without it. We have examined several cases on two

or three pages taken at random. On page 24, we find Dewey v. Osborn referred to page 538; it should be 329; and the quotation indicated by inverted commas is not precisely the same in words as in the volume cited. On page 109, besides an instance of quotation marks appended to a dislocated citation, The People v. Douglas is referred to 4 Cowen, 24, 25; it should be 26. Comyns v. Boyer, the compiler says, is.overruled in Drury v. Defontaine, 1 Taunt. 131, on the ground that Stat. 29 Car. 11, "only prohibits business or work of their ordinary calling." The case is overruled there, and the statute is so construed, but Comyns v. Boyer is not overruled on that ground as we understand it.

Sir John Comyn would doubtless be gratified to learn from 3 Ohio R. 30, that all the cases he quoted were good law.

The compiler says: "1 Comyn Dig. Action, F. case decided by Hale at Norfolk, in 1662, 1 Roll. Abr. 29, 1. 36-denied by Spencer, J., in 12 Johns. R. 168, - —' Is a very unreasonable decision.' These are cases