One aspect of this subject is intelligently discussed by BIGELOW C. J. in a dissenting opinion in Wright v. Carson Water Co. (Nev '95) 42 Pacif. Rep.

198.

ADOPTION AND LEGITIMATION.-Perhaps it was the omission of a single word from the decree that turned the devolution of an inheritance in Murphy v. Portrum, 32 Southwest. Rep. 633. There had been a petition for adoption and legitimation of an illegitimate son of the petitioner; and the decree therein adjudged adoption. It was held in a subsequent suit, involving title to real property, that this gave the son the limited right of inheritance defined by the adoption law, but did not give him the full right of inheritance.

JURY WORK WELL DONE. Judge WILLARD BARTLETT in closing up the work of the Supreme Court in Brooklyn in anticipation of the new organization of the appellate branch of the courts and the merger of the Superior City Courts, gives some information as to the results of trial by jury of a kind which ought to be more familiar to the profession and to the public. He says: "During the eleven years of my judicial service I have kept a careful record of the jury cases which have been tried before me, and an examination of my notebook shows that it is only in twenty per cent. of all the jury cases that are tried that any appeal whatever is taken. So that, as to eighty litigants out of every hundred, what is done by the jury is done finally and forever."

This is a striking confirmation of the conclusion in which the voting population are evidently settled, namely, that trial by jury, notwithstanding the burden it imposes of time and money, upon the community, is on the whole a useful and successful method of determining the great mass of controversies which arise among men. Philosophers have never been satisfied with it; business men in the great centres of commerce who escape jury duty, do not esteem it highly; but the average citizen throughout the country who participates in the work, commonly at this inconvenience, sees constantly its real value. These facts stated by Judge BARTLETT are akin to those which we gathered last year in respect to the contest of wills, showing that of over 1,600 wills that were propounded for probate in the city of New York in one year a very small percentage were contested and only thirteen wills were set aside, six of which were set aside for the lack of the formalities of execution which the law requires to be observed to prevent injustice to heirs by being deprived of their inheritance on doubtful evidence, so that there is no foundation whatever for the apprehension felt by many people that it is useless to make a will.

Justice BARTLETT very clearly points to the significance of the fact that only one-fifth of the trials are appealed, by saying that "the administration of justice so far as the bar is concerned and so far as. litigants are concerned depends a great deal more upon the ability with which the work is done in the first instance at the trial than upon anything else in our entire judicial system."

We have always urged that the most efficacious of all ways for relieving the courts of last resort is to improve the standards and increase the deliberation of the courts of first instance.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CORPORATION LAW is emphasized by the increasing number of new corporations formed in various parts of the country. Each week the number of new corporations average about three hundred, and the total capitalization is very large. At the rate of fifteen thousand new corporations a year we shall soon become a nation of stockholders; if the courts only do justice to stockholders in their controversies with mismanagement, rings and freezing out.

REALISTIC EVIDENCE. The Supreme Court of Missouri have recently decided a question upon the use of realistic evidence, apparently following the New York case of People v. Jackson, 111 N. Y., 362; using, however, this case as not defining the law but rather as allowing the use of such evidence upon the consent of defendant, and as serving to make more lucid the descriptions given by testimony of a witness. This Missouri case, State v. O'Reilly (Mo. Feb. '95) 29 S. W. Rep. 577, has stated the law more decidedly than the judges of our Appellate Court in the case referred to.

The State was permitted over objections of defendant to introduce in evidence and to present to the jury a photograph of the interior of the saloon in which occurred the shooting, for which the defendant was being tried. In this photograph appeared grouped three prearranged figures, to indicate the position of defendant, deceased, and the father of the deceased.

Defendant's counsel objected that it deprived him of the right to crossexamine as to the accuracy of the positions, thus giving undue weight to the theory of part of the witnesses as to the manner in which the homicide occurred.

The Court held that as the photograph was taken shortly after the shooting and more than three years before the trial and the positions were accurate as near as could be determined by the witnesses the photograph was admissable upon the same ground that a diagram is admissable to better enable witnesses properly to locate persons and places. This did not de

prive defendant of the right to cross-examine as he could cross-examine the witnesses who testified as to the correctness of the positions of the persons in the saloon. In a case somewhat similar in Georgia, Shaw v. State, 83 Ga., 92 S. C., 9 S. E., 768, it was held not error to admit such evidence.

LYNCH LAW. Speaking of the riot at New Orleans, Lord Coleridge said that the respect for law which is ingrained in the Anglo-Saxon character sometimes yielded to the pressure of great emergencies; that there were times when the swift methods of Judge Lynch became necessary in a community where crime is influential and powerful enough to debauch or intimidate courts or juries. This language, from the Lord Chief Justice of England, while he was assuming the wig and gown, surprised me.-Fishback's Recollections of Lord Coleridge, p. 9.

PROMPT TRIAL. The foreman of the Grand Jury, from the gallery above, handed down to the clerk, whose desk was at the right of the judge, an indictment which was presented at the end of a staff about ten feet long.

The clerk took the document from the ring in which it was enclosed, inspected it a moment to see if it was properly signed and endorsed, announced the name of the defendant, who immediately appeared in the dock, and, after arraignment and plea, the petit jury was sworn to try the case. The prisoners to be tried had been committed by the examining magistrates and indictments had been prepared before the assembling of the Grand Jury. The examinations by the Grand Jury were very brief, and the witnesses came at once from the Grand Jury room into court to testify at the trial.-Fishback's Recollections of Lord Coleridge, p. 54, 55.

He adds: The Grand Jury were in session two hours, and at the end of that time they had returned into court twelve indictments. These were all disposed of in two days and a half.—p. 62.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE CRITICAL MIND, as described by Lord Acton, is full of instructive suggestion for the lawyer :

"The critic is one who, when he lights on an interesting statement, begins by suspicion. He remains in suspense until he has subjected his authority to three operations: First, he asks whether he has read the passage as the author wrote it. For the transcriber, and the editor, and the official or officious censor on top of the editor, have played strange tricks and have much to answer for. And if they are not to blame, it may turn out that the author wrote his book twice over, that you can discover the first jet, the progressive variations, things added and things struck out. Next is the ques

tion where the writer got his information. If, from a previous writer, it can be ascertained, and the inquiry has to be repeated. If from unpublished papers, they must be traced, and when the fountain head is reached, or the track disappears, the question of veracity arises. The responsible writer's character, his position, antecedents and probable motives have to be examined into; and this is what, in a different and adapted sense of the word, may be called the higher criticism, in comparison with the servile and often mechanical work of pursuing statements to their root. For a historian has to be treated as a witness, and not believed unless his sincerity is ascertained. The maxim that a man must be assumed to be honest until the contrary is proved, was not made for him.

"For us, then, the estimate of authorities, the weighing of testimony, is more meritorious than the potential discovery of new matter."-The Study of History, Lord Acton, p. 40.

ARBITRATION AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR WAR.

This substitution is only one phase of the great movement in which the progressive part of the human race have been engaged ever since the Prince of Peace interpreted the Mosaic law in its new aspect, namely, the establishment of conscience and reason as the guide and director of brute force. Brute force still remains in existence, like the sheriff standing behind the judge, posse comitatus behind the sheriff, and the military of the State behind the posse comitatus, ready to be exercised; but not to be called into use until reason has had her opportunity, and to be directed in use by the dictates of reason. The gradual substitution of reason in the place of brute force, this has been the history of the development of law from the beginning.

The great problem in international law thus far has been this-that there is no common authority above the nations which can compel submission; and, therefore, it has been supposed that we cannot have anything but arbitration. As there is no common power superior to all nations to which we can appeal, many jurists have denied that the word "law" could be properly used in respect to international justice. Suggestions have been made that some federation of nations be created, which should have that common power; but these suggestions have not yet come into practical form, in the judgment of men of experience in national affairs. To appreciate how serious is the task of substituting, in place of war, arbitration or judicial reasoning, whether it be by a court or what is commonly called arbitration, it must be remembered that it is a plan to take away power from one set of men and confer it upon another. It is a plan to take away the power of declaring war from the executive and confer upon the judiciary the power of reasoning to conclusions which the executive must carry out. It is a revolution. But it is one of those revolutions that we see going on, though they take place slowly.-Austin Abbott.

Arbitrators are not necessarily temporarily appointed for a particular case; we have had in some States permanent boards of arbitration. The first thing will be the settlement of individual cases; the two nations having a dispute, first having tried diplomacy, may submit their difference to a temporary court of arbitration. By this system the public mind is educated and nations get used to the idea. In process of time the thing to be aimed at is a permanent board of arbitration, or a permanent court for the arbitration of international disputes.