welcomed, and we believe that the Hornbook series, like the Student series, will be found a very useful addition to our means of acquiring an extended and systematic knowledge of the law or coordinating the conclusions gathered from the decisions.

NEW CRIMINAL PROCEDURE OR NEW COMMENTARIES ON THE LAW OF PLEADING AND EVIDENCE AND THE PRACTICE IN CRIMINAL CASES. By Joel Prentiss Bishop, LL. D. Fourth edition. Being a new work based on former editions. Vol. 1. General and Elementary, complete in itself. Chicago. T. H. Flood and Company, Law Publishers. 1895.

Few writers in our profession have thought so much on the function and task of the author of a treatise on the law as Mr. Bishop, and the charming frankness of his prefaces, and the keen blows which he delivers to his "enemies," real or imaginary, make the appearance of a new volume from him always an interesting event. We say new volume for this, although founded on former editions, is substantially a new work. His preface indicates that nothing of the characteristic thoroughness of his usual methods has been wanting. He says, in effect, that in his earlier work beside stating the law with all necessary words, he, out of consideration for inefficient or doubting readers, amplified his statements somewhat, we suppose, on the theory that for the average digestion it is well to mix some brand with the flour. The improvements which he has made in this new treatment of the subject of criminal procedure consist chiefly in bringing all branches of the topic up to date, adding the recent developments of the law with some ten thousand additional pages, and retrenching the statements of the text by purely verbal condensation so as to give, in the briefest way compatible with full statement of the law, the rules and the reason of those rules as now understood.

AMERICAN PROBATE LAW AND PRACTICE. A complete and practical treatise, expository of probate law and practice as it obtains to-day, including a discussion of the general principles governing the execution and proof of wills, the devolution of property, the administration of estates, and the relations subsisting between guardian and ward. Applicable to all the States. By Frank S. Rice, Counsellor at Law, Author of "Rice on Civil and Criminal Evidence," etc. Albany, N. Y.: Matthew Bender, Law Publisher, 511-513 Broadway. 1894.

The author of a well-known work of evidence here gives us an analytical condensation and summary of the leading American decisions, illumined by the opinions of a number of text-writers upon the important subject of surrogate practice. His work is characterized by the same freshness and fulness of statement and abundant quotation from higher authority as marked his compilation upon evidence. His treatment seems to be conveniently full upon subjects within the ordinary routine of practice. The tabulation of the provisions of the California code which he 'commends very

highly closes the volume, being preceded by a reprint of the sections of the New York Code of Civil Procedure. His eulogium on the California code provisions on probate law, which he attributes to David Dudley Field, we commend to the attention of the New York statutory revisers; and we add the information (which, without detracting from the well-earned fame of Mr. Field, should enhance their prepossessions in favor of the California act) that it was really drawn or rather settled in terms and in detail by the late Alexander W. Bradford, one of the ablest probate judges this country has ever produced, who devoted his personal attention to it with great thoroughness at a period toward the close of his long and varied experience, and gave it as his contribution toward the great work of codefication in which Mr. Field was engaged.

LAWYERS' REPORTS, ANNOTATED, BOOK XXV. AND BOOK XXVI. All current cases of general value and importance decided in the United States, State and Territorial Courts, with full annotations by Burdett A. Rich, Editor, and Henry P. Farnham, Assistant Editor. Aided by the publishers' editorial staff and, particularly in selection, by the Reporters and Judges in each Court. (Cited 25 L. R. A., 26 L. R. A., &c.) Rochester, N. Y. The Lawyers' Coöperative Publishing Company.

1894.

The character and value of this series will readily be appreciated by the reader, who will open to the appendix in any volume and examine the "Resumé of Decisions, showing the changes, progress and development of the law" during the current quarter. For instance, on p. 869 of vol. 26, we read among the new rulings as to torts. "Conversion: The question as to the conversion of a livery team by driving it beyond the point for which it was hired is answered in the negative in an Iowa case, No. 366." Turning to the page thus indicated we find that in a considered opinion by Judge Kinne, the Iowa Court repudiates the "harsh doctrine" that such a departure is in itself a conversion; and the editors in an extended footnote trace the doctrine from its origin, showing in what states it has been sanctioned and with what limitations.

THE

UNIVERSITY
LAW REVIEW.

VOLUME II.

MAY, 1895.

NUMBER 7.

TH

LAW IN OUR COLLEGES.

HERE is a growing impression that the regular college course ought to include some law; and the number of colleges which have commenced to furnish such instruction appears to be steadily increasing.

Of course, in almost every institution desiring to attempt this, two questions must be considered: What is most needed? What can our present resources supply? The first objective point is to make a beginning. The beginning need not be large; it is only necessary that it be useful. If useful it will grow of itself.

What then is most needed?

All our readers will probably agree that one need of the college student is a college-taught knowledge of the rights and duties of citizens. Every citizen learns from common life some truth and some error on this subject, in a haphazard, fragmentary way. If the false conceptions, and the demoralizing object-lessons of which common life is full mislead him, it is because he has not been systematically instructed in a few great controlling principles of human welfare as affected by political and legal conditions.

Good progress has been made in introducing instruction in Political Science, and to some extent in Constitutional Law; but the Principles of Law, which a citizen ought to have some knowledge of for his own right guidance in common life, have as yet been little taught. Respect for law in

the minds of our people at large cannot always rest on force. It must be supported by the appreciation of the Reasonableness and the Usefulness of Law.

The citizen at large does not need to acquire a technical knowlege of any branch of law,-not even of the law affecting his own business.

is of great importance to the State that all its educated citizens should have sufficient knowledge about the Law, to understand what it is, its reasonableness, the methods of its growth and improvement, and its necessity to secure our prosperity and progress. It is not the details of the law itself that he needs for their own sake in his vocation, that should be offered him, but a knowledge of these qualities of law; and almost any branch of law, whether it has or has not any relation to a man's vocation or purposes is capable of being so explained as to manifest the true function and value of Law as a condition of human progress.

This the colleges ought, in some degree and by some method, to include in the equipment of every educated man, for intelligent life in a free republic.

NOTES.

WHAT ARE LIABILITIES WHICH CAN BE PROVIDED FOR IN AN ASSIGNMENT FOR BENEFIT OF CREDITORS? We have received the following inquiry from an esteemed subscriber:

"At page 96, in commenting upon the matter of Hevenor, 144 N. Y., 271, you say, among other things:

"Upon this view it would seem that an assignment cannot provide for liability of an endorser of paper not yet due.'

"Do you regard that expression as justified either by the Hevenor case in the Court of Appeals or at the General Term, or by Brainerd v. Dunning, 30 N. Y., 211, upon which latter decision the Hevenor case largely rests? * * I do not understand such to be the effect of the authorities."

We are inclined to think that our inference was too broad, and thank our correspondent for calling us to account. Yet the question we intended to raise remains, viz., the difficulty of drawing the line between liabilities originating after the assignment, and liabilities inchoate at and before the assignment.

Before negotiable paper is mature, is there any liability upon the in

dorser? If not, then mere indorsement is not a liability. If it is, still the liability is not fixed; it arises on failure to demand and give notice. Is the "liability" of a guarantor of collection, which is at most merely inchoate before the principal's default, within the rule? Then suppose after assignment by the guarantor to secure all his liabilities, an effort to collect of the principal is nade, and successful as to part of the sum. Is the liability changed thereby? Is the liability of the assumer of a mortgage, before it is known whether an action at law will be brought against him for the full debt, or only a foreclosure and a judgment for deficiency, changed by the bringing of foreclosure and ascertaining a small deficiency? If a person liable in such contingent ways should transfer his property with intent to evade the enforcement of the possible ultimate liability, the contingent claimant would be deemed an "existing creditor," even before the amount of liability was determined.

The meaning of "liability" in common parlance, as well as when sued of the financial condition of a National bank, is thus explained by Justice Brown in delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in Cochrane v. United States, 157 U. S., 286, at page 296. "We know of no definition of the word liability' either given in the dictionaries or as used in the common speech of men, which restricts it to such as are absolute, or excludes the idea of contingency. In fact, it is more frequently used in the latter sense than in the former, as when we speak of the liability of an insurer or a common carrier, or the liability to accidents or to errors; and in Webster's Dictionary the word 'liable' is said to refer to a future possible or probable happening, which may not actually occur: as horses are liable to slip; even the sagacious are liable to make mistakes.'

"That Congress must have contemplated contingent liabilities is evident, when we consider the object of §5211, which was to apprise the Comptroller of the Currency and the public of the condition of each national bank at stated periods. It is manifest that a report which failed to specify the liabilities which the bank had assumed, and which it might be called upon to discharge, would represent very imperfectly the actual financial status of the association."

The object of these questions is to point the attention of counsel drafting the terms of an assignment to uncertainties which may touch interests of much importance to his clients.

ABUSES TOLERATED BY CORPORATION LAW AS OFTEN ADMINISTERED. Mr. Justice Brown of the Supreme Court of the United States in his vigorous address before the graduating class of Yale Law School, reprinted in part in the Forum, says: "Corporations are formed under the laws of one