sine qua non, the only open road, to substantial reform in the procedure of our courts, is this chief feature of the plan we propose in the same bill-through rules of court. Any plan that omits this feature is like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out.

We hope to see legislation this winter, but legislation that will not add to, but rather curtail laws that already exist on this subject, and render future legislation unnecessary by committing the matter of regulating the courts to the courts them: selves. Let chapter 125 of the Code hereafter consist of a few general provisions that will open the courts to litigants and leave the regulation of their business to experts. If any legislator likes our bill he can use it ad libitum—if he can improve it, so much the better; but such as it is we here submit:

An Act to Amend and Re-enact.

CHAPTER CXXV.

Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia that Chapter 125 of the Code entitled Rules and Pleading, be amend ed and re-enacted as follows:

1. All suits at law or in equity shall be instituted in the circuit courts by summons served on the defendant or defendants and made returnable to a future rule day not less than seven days from the date of the service of the summons.

2. Rules shall be held in the office of the circuit clerk on Monday of each week. The initial pleading in a suit shall be filed by the plaintiff on the rule day to which the summons is made returnable. The defendant shall file his counter pleading or reply at or before the next succeeding rule day; and so on interchangeably between the plaintiff and defendant, the plead ings shall continue to he filed at the next succeeding rule day until issue is joined and the case is ready to be entered on the proper court docket.

3. If the plaintiff is in default on the first rule day, the clerk shall dismiss the suit and tax $5 cost against the plaintiff, which shall be paid to the defendant before said suit shall be reinstated. If the plaintiff shall, after the first rule day, be in default in replying to any pleading of the defendant on the next succeedingrule day after it is filed, he shall pay $5 to the de

fendant as a condition of filing any subsequent pleading in the case; and if he shall be in default at any two consecutive rule days he shall be non suited and pay the defendant ten dollars.

If the defendant shall be in default in replying to any pleading by the plaintiff on the next succeeding rule day after it is filed, if the case be at law, whether the demand of the plaintiff be one arising either ex-contractu or ex-delicto, for a sum certain, verified by the affidavit of the plaintiff, an office judgment shall be entered therefor, which shall become final, it' not vacated for good cause, at the next term of the court; and if the suit be in equity, the bill shall be taken for confessed, and no plea, demurrer, or answer shall be thereafter received in said suit, unless at the next term the court is convinced that the defendant has a good and substantial defence thereto, and his default is satisfactorily explained. No pleading that does not go to the inerits shall be filed in any suit at rules unless accompanied by an affidavit of the attorney of record in the case, stating that he believes it to be substantial and ought to prevail, and that it is not made for the purpose of delay.

4. In suits in equity the testimony of witnesses who are within the jurisdiction of the court and able to be present, shall be given orally, as at law, before the presiding judge; and by agreement of counsel or the direction of the judge in any case, may be reduced to writing by a stenographer, and when duly authenticated, be filed as a part of the record in the case.

5. The clerk of the court shall keep a Rules Docket which shall at all times contain a complete exhibit, in short entries, of the status of all cases at Rules, and shall be accessible to the parties and their attorneys. The docket for chancery cases shall be separate from that for other cases.

6 The clerk shall also prepare a Stet Docket which shall contain all cases at law not standing for trial, or requiring the services of a jury,, but on which some issue has been joined at Rules which does not conclude to the country. It shall further contain all jury cases in which the pleadings have been closed at Rules, but have not been ordered by the plaintiffs or defendants to the Trial Docket. The Chancery Stet Docket shall contain all cases which do not stand for final decrees.

7. The clerk shall prepare a Trial Docket for each term of court which shall contain only those cases which stand for trial or final judgment at that term of court. Any case on the Trial Docket which is continued at the instance of the plaintiff shall be transferred to the Stet Docket and shall not thereafter be

restored to the Trial Docket except by mutual agreement of the parties, or in the absence of that, by a rule entered on the Rules Docket one week before the opening of the term, by the party desiring a trial, requiring the opposite party to show cause at that term why the case should not be tried; and the court may, in its judgment, on the return of said rule, order the case to the foot of the Trial Docket for that term.

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8. The judges of the several circnit courts, together with one member of the Supreme Court of Appeals to be nominated by the court, and any committee of three lawyers that may be appointed by the State Bar Association, and the successors of each or any of them, shall constitute a permanent commission with power to make, adopt, and from time to time, amend, revise, and promulgate a Code of Rules regulating, governing, and, so far as may be, expediting and minimizing the cost of proced. ure in the courts; and which rules shall be uniform and binding in all the courts of the state to which they apply. Said rules shall include a scale of fees and charges, and all allowances for all official services of all court officers rendered in a case, such as make up the "costs." The commission shall cause said Code of Procedure to be printed and bound in convenient form and placed in sufficient numbers in the custody of the state librarian for sale; and from the time the same are so published they shall be put in operation and control the procedure in the courts, so far as not in conflict with any statute.

9. The first meeting of said commission shall be held in the court room of the Supreme Court at Charleston, on the first Wednesday in July, 1911, and annually thereafter, at such time and place as the commission shall appoint. The necessary expenses of said commission shall be paid out of any money in the state treasury not otherwise appropriated.

10. Sections 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of said chapter are here. by repealed. The remaining sections from the 8th to the 66th inclusive are omitted from this chapter and transferred, so far as they or any of them may be approved, revised, or amended by said commission, to the Code of Rules of Procedure, herein provided for, and become a part thereof under such classification and arrangement as said commission may adopt.

This act shall take effect from its passage.

If a team of horses pull together they are sure to accomplish something; and the same is true of men.

The Conservation of an Impartial Judiciary

There is one thing for which President Taft's administra tion will be gratefully remembered by men of all parties, and gain its chief distinction in the history of the country, and that is his splendid appointments to the Supreme Bench.

The whole country is to be congratulated that a president of Mr. Taft's antecedents and fine discrimination was in office when so many vacancies occurred, and that he has saved that great tribunal from debauchment by political partisanship, halfbreed lawyers and low standards of personal character.

We glory in this great example of defense and protection to an impartial judiciary. It is another pillar under the foundations of the Republic. It is worth a half dozen victories in the field of military or political campaigns for the stability of our institutions.

We have no patience with that quality of political partisanship-we have only contempt-that counts the judiciary a part of the spoils of political partisan victories. Yet that is the conception of the average politician and the practical result which follows party management.

Look at the Supreme Court of our own state! We do not charge that party politics has influenced the work of that court, but we do say that the fact that every member of that tribunal affiliates with the same political party and is the product, so to speak, of political partisanship, is a reflection on the court, a reflection on the State, and puts the court under suspicion and detracts from its standing in the public esteem as an impartial tribunal. Such a situation ought to be impossible in our political polity.

It is a great shock, just now to the partisan press of the country that Mr. Taft has given the greatest office in the gov ernment to a Democrat, a southern Democrat, an ex-Confederate soldier! They do not perceive that the greatest credit that is due Mr. Taft by this appointment is by thus emphasizing the

independence of the judiciary and its entire removal from partisan considerations.

They fail also to appreciate the fact that notwithstanding partisan affiliations, Mr. Taft has recognized that from the time Edward Douglass White became an Associate Justice he ceased to be, as a justice, either a Democrat or a southerner. His par ticipation in the civil war has never affected his judicial poise, as evidenced by all his opinions. He supported the autonomy of the States in the Northern Securities case, and the broadest powers of the Federal government in the Insular cases. The many notable opinions which he has announced as a representa. tive of the court clearly demonstrate that he does not belong to any one school of constitutional construction, but that each question as it arises received the profound and often subtle consideration of his unusual intellect, and that his one purpose is to hold in nicest equipoise the relative powers of state and nation by promoting the efficiency of each as to matters within its sphere. Above all considerations is the unmistakable impression of his intellectual integrity. Never has his judicial impar tiality been for a moment questioned The universal respect which men of all parties, classes, sections and creeds have for the new Chief Justice of the United States was strikingly maniifested by the action of the senate in immediately confirming his appointment without a dissenting vote.

These things are above and beyond the range of vision of the mere political partisan of the man who has but one slogan in politics: "To the victor belongs the spoils;" but every patriotic heart in this great nation beat faster when they recognized that we had a president too big for ward politics, and too broad in his conception of the greatest tribunal in the world to debauch it by a mean or partisan appointment.

THE MILL THAT NEVER STOPS-Figg-Talking about pu gilism and state laws. did you ever notice it?"

Fogg-Ever notice what?”

"That there's no law to prohibit fighting in the state of matrimony."