Court on the ground that it works a deprivation conductor was advised of the plaintiff's intention of property without due process of law. Nevada has enacted that county commissioners may buy or construct telephone lines on petition of two-thirds of the taxpayers, and Wisconsin has authorized cities, towns and villages to issue bonds for telephone lines. In Michigan municipal ownership of street railways has been declared unconstitutional, as in violation of the Constitution, article 14, section 9, providing that "the State may not be a party to or interested in any work of internal improvement." The question came up on the act authorizing municipal ownership of the Detroit street railways. TH CITY RAILROAD PASSENGERS AND CONDUCTORS. HE appellate term of the Supreme Court in New York city, consisting of Justices Friedman, MacLean and Leventritt, has unanimously decided a case of much interest to passengers in city railroad cars. It was the case of Mary Schaefer against the Central Crosstown Railroad. The facts, as they appeared in evidence, were that at about 8 o'clock in the evening on the 31st day of July, 1899, the plaintiff, a washerwoman, carrying a large basket filled with linen, boarded one of the defendant's cars at Ninth street and First avenue. Immediately on paying her fare she asked and obtained of the conductor a transfer for a Broadway car. She testified that she had traveled on the Crosstown line several times a week for a period of ten years, always with her wash-basket, and that all the conductors knew her. On this particular occasion the car stopped, as usual, on the easterly side of Broadway at the intersection of Eighth street, to permit passengers to alight. She had made no sign or request of the conductor to stop the car, but when it came to a standstill two other passengers on the same seat with her rose to leave the car. She testified: "I stood up at the time when the other people stood up. * * * I guess those two ladies were right before me. * * * Right when the last lady went down I went down." As she descended from the car, holding her basket in both hands, and when she had one foot on the ground, the car was suddenly started at the signal of the conductor, and the injuries for which this action was brought resulted. Upon this statement of facts the Fourth Municipal Court had dismissed the complaint, on the familiar doctrine of " contributory negligence." But the appellate term thought that was neous. Justice Leventritt, who wrote the opinion, in which both his associates concurred, said: erro "A conductor of a street railroad car should give passengers a reasonable time to alight, and failure to do so is negligence. In this case we are satisfied that it was a question of fact whether the to alight. It cannot be said, as a matter of law, that each individual passenger must make a personal request of, or signal or communication of intention to, the conductor that he or she desires to get off. Where a number of people arise simultaneously after one of them has signalled the conductor, it is his duty to give all of them equal opportunity to leave the car safely. In the case at bar the car had stopped at a corner where it was usual for it to halt to permit transfer to connecting cars. The conductor had issued a transfer to the plaintiff for this crossing and should be presumed to have known that she desired to alight at the place for which the transfer was given. It might almost be said that points for which transfers have been issued bear some resemblance to regular stations of steam railroad companies, where it is incumbent on them to stop long enough to allow passengers a reasonable time to alight, whether or not the conductor knows of any passengers desiring to leave the car. "It was also a question of fact whether the conductor did give the plaintiff a reasonable time to alight. If, as in the case before us, he was not on the rear platform, but somewhere towards the front of the car, it was equally his duty to ascertain whether the car could be safely started. There is proof that his attention was attracted to the plaintiff. She followed directly behind passengers who had signaled the conductor, or who had risen in response to the invitation to alight contained in his announcement Broadway' when the car reached that thoroughfare. The authority invoked by the defendant (Losee v. Watervliet Turnpike and Railroad Company, 63 Hun, 404) is not in point. The reversal was not on the ground of failure on the part of the plaintiff to give notice of her intention to alight, but for error in the judge's charge. The court held that, under the circumstances of the case where the plaintiff had not given any signal to the conductor, nor had offered any proof to show that the conductor's attention had been attracted to her, but had merely risen in the car and taken a few steps toward the conductor after another passenger had safely alighted, it was a question for the jury whether the conductor was justified in starting the car when he did. This opinion, however, contains the statement of the rule, by way of dictum, it is true, here adopted as applicable: When he (the conductor) stops for one passenger who signals him, another may take advantage of the opportunity to leave the car.' In this case it was clearly for the jury to say whether the conductor saw the plaintiff attempt to alight, or whether he could or should have seen her, or whether or not he was negligent in starting the car when he did. "It cannot be said, as a matter of law, that the plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence. It is not negligence per se for a passenger to board or alight from a car without taking hold of the railings to guard against sudden movement of the car. (Gainard v. Rochester City Railroad, 50 Hun, 22; aff'd, 121 N. Y. 661.) It is said in that opinion: Some have packages in one hand and some in both, and none have reason to suppose that the car will start with a sudden and dangerous motion while they are passing in,' and this is equally true when they are passing out." The judgment of the court below was therefore reversed and a new trial ordered, with costs to abide the event. The remarks of the appellate court should be read attentively by railroad employes as well as by passengers, the principles involved being likely to come often in question. Albany Argus. THE LAW AND THE TEMPLE OF JUSTICE. BY EDWIN HIGGINS, OF THE BALTIMORE BAR. Suggested by the opening of the new Court House, Baltimore, Md., January 8, 1900, said to be the most beautiful and convenient building of its kind in the world. At dawn of time an Almighty hand launched In ev'ry realm the law triumphant reigns, Hard, stern, relentless; with power divine Enrobed, resistless; yet tempered with all, By mercy. The elements are His winged Messengers strong and swift to do His will. The law, 'Tis a flaming sword on execution At the beck of the gladsome hand of man. From the loftiest summits in the realms With the eternal springs of righteousness. In the deep midnight sky their glittering A decade of centuries and a half, To scale the walls and steeps on and up to Not in wilds or solitudes doth Justice At her command the sleeping marble wakes -- Of a resplendent art, redolent with The bloom, the song, the purity from which No judge e'er sat at city's gate so fair As this, and sentence gave. Nor court on banks Rome, where lictors armed the imperial Bid righteousness exalt a people's life. — O Justice, forever, make this thy shrine type of architecture that once prevailed for public buildings. Its walls of red sandstone, its gabled roof, its arched window-frames and lofty pillars of tinted, polished marble, were neither grand nor magnificent, but they were artistically designed and attractively beautiful. Above the cupola a figure of the goddess of Justice posed, a sword in one hand and a pair of scales in the other, illustrative of the purpose of the founders of the ancient pile. Famous governors, great statesmen, learned judges, eminent lawyers, frequented its halls and won immortal honors within its portals. It has disappeared from the earth, and is no more than a memory. The demon of an advancing age wantonly despoiled it of its treasures, ruthlessly demolished its walls, to give place to a huge monument of cold, dead-faced granite that few admire and no one reveres. In the northeast corner was the chancellor's room, full of books and papers, and where the great Walworth held court. On the second floor, in the southwest corner, was the Supreme Court room, where famed judges, such as Nelson, Bacon, Bronson, Beardsley, Johnson and others held court, and where the giants of the profession met in legal combat and displayed their learning and powers of oratory. Behind the judge's chair, against the wall, was suspended a full-length portrait of the great lawyer, Daniel Cady. At the right, imbedded in the wall, was a large, ovalfaced clock, seemingly out of place and out of proportion, but it extended through the partition to the assembly chamber, where, at a greater elevation and with a similar face, it placidly looked down on the array of law-makers, and with its soft tick and faithful hands pointed the hour while patriots raged and crossroads statesmen posed in weary debate. On a wintry afternoon a motley gathering of law students had taken possession and were awaiting the arrival of a trio of lawyers who had been appointed by the court to examine candidates for admission to the bar. A number, standing in groups, were earnestly talking together; others sat silent and pale, and still others were quietly looking over their memorandums. The confusion of noises ceased when the lawyers came in, and all became seated. Then the young men with anxious expectation scanned the faces of the grave triers to learn whether the examination would be merciful and lenient or severe and exacting. It was to be oral, the students seated in alphabetical order and a list of their names given to each examiner. The first onset on their legal stores and fading memories was made by a lawyer from the country. He sobered down his genial face and looked over the class as though he had a task in view that would be both amusing and entertaining. He had a pleasant voice and a twinkling eye, and put his questions in a familiar, conversational way, and on an average. Suddenly the ink of one of the finding out about how much legal lore the young student had accumulated, kept within his knowl- | interlineations faded in fifteen seconds, and the edge and let him pass. conclusion was at once reached that it was fresher ink than the others, as the ink had not had time to thoroughly permeate the fiber of the paper. Several interlineations were found to fade in from thirteen to sixteen seconds, and these were marked as having been made at a more recent date. His successor was a lawyer from the city, of slender mold, a bald head, beardless face, thin neck and the voice of a woman. He gave out his questions sharp and fast, and succeeded in discovering the ignorance of a large number of the class, and exposed it in a way that filled them with mortification and grief. At last he struck a country pedagogue of some years' experience, who had been teaching school, reading law and pettifogging. He had a cool head and a good memory. When the encounter closed the blonde attorney was in full retreat and the class was triumphant. The third examiner was an elderly lawyer, mild-manuscript was known and soda was dropped on mannered and friendly. He re-examined the students who had been painfully discomfited by his associate, helped them to regain their wits and confidence, when the most of them acquitted themselves creditably. The day was far spent when the class was dismissed and with relaxed nerves filed out of the court-room. That night the lonesome streets of the old town were haunted by young men walking about in couples, discussing their chances for admission; the confident ones had gone to bed, and a few gave away to foolish dissipation. The next morning the names of those who had "passed" appeared in the papers. One student, when he read his name in the list, gave a deep sigh of relief, and then his heart began to swell with secret pride and satisfaction, for what he knew of the law he had discovered for himself, as no counselor gives any attention to a student. J. W. D. ALBANY, Feb. 10, 1900. INK AS A WITNESS. N a case in the Supreme Court it was alleged that interlineations had been made in the papers after they were filed, and the papers were submitted to expert chemists to decide whether the interlineations had been made after the papers were filed or at the time the paper was drawn. The process followed by the chemists was simple, though tedious. Hypochloride of soda was the only chemical used by one expert, but the result was the same as that arrived at by the other experts. Tests were made on each line of the document submitted. The soda bleached the ink, and, as the writing in some parts was done many years ago, the first drop of soda was placed on a line which was not in controversy. The writing slowly faded, and it was fifty-one seconds before it was bleached. A drop on another interlineation faded the writing in forty-nine seconds, on another in fifty-one seconds, and the interlineations made when the paper was first written faded in about fifty seconds After all interlineations had been so marked, the next step was to ascertain as nearly as possible at what date the interlineations were made, and for this purpose many manuscripts in which similar ink was used on the same kind of paper were taken. The exact date of the writing of each each, beginning with the date of writing of the manuscript in controversy. The time necessary to fade the ink gradually decreased from fifty-two and fifty seconds as the soda was dropped on the manuscripts of more recent years. When the fading took place in twenty seconds, manuscripts but a month apart in writing were used, and the fading in fourteen and fifteen seconds was thus fixed in a certain month. The examining chemists know nothing of the points in the controversy, and the report was made that certain interlineations were probably made in the specified month. The attorneys in the case were amazed, as the month named was that in which they believed the more recent writing had been done. Indianapolis Press. UNCONSTITUTIONAL LEGISLATION AS A THE DEFENSE. HE liability of an officer who executes a law which is later held void is one of the unsatisfactory phases of the American doctrine of unconstitutional legislation. It is a development of an decision to be made with reluctance, even by a older problem: the defense to a trespass afforded by judicial process. An officer is not protected in the execution of warrants which disclose on their face their invalidity. This is not, however, limited to defects of form. An excess of jurisdiction, not dependent on some error in the previous procedure, is said to appear from the face of the document since an officer of court is presumed to know the law. This reasoning, first applied to the common-law limits of jurisdiction, has been extended, in most States, to an exercise of jurisdiction given by unauthorized local ordinances and statutes later held unconstitutional. And so, although it is admitted that a judge of a superior court is not liable for any judicial utterance, subordinate justices, sheriffs and even public prosecutors have been held liable for enforcing mandates of legislative bodies (Kelley v. Bemis, 4 Gray, 83; Merrit v. St. Paul, 11 Minn. 223; Warren v. Kelley, 80 Me. 512). A few States, however, have repudiated this doctrine. (Edes v. Boardman, 58 N. H. 580; Brooks v. Mangan, 86 Mich. 576.) The reasoning of this latter case was recently affirmed and applied in defense of a public officer who procured issue of process under an ordinance which the court held invalid. (Tillman v. Beard, 80 N. W. Rep. 248 [Mich.].) In Continental Europe the need of decisive executive action in States surrounded by enemies gave rise to a distinct system of administrative law for the protection of such officials. England, however, since freer from external pressure, developed no such system. In this country, though it is thought that the foundations are being laid for a national administrative law, as yet it has not been | generally recognized. The problem of unconstitutional legislation, however, is peculiarly our own, and it may be suggested that old precedents derived from England should not prevent our working out in this case some system of administrative protection. It would seem, moreover, that a distinction may be drawn between those early decisions and the principal case. The reason for the original doctrine that an executive officer is liable for excess of jurisdiction was the danger of abuse of official power. From unconstitutional laws, however, our danger is not abuse of process, but abuse of legislative discretion. It is moreover, not unfair to hold that officers are bound to know the extent of their jurisdiction at common law, but to say they must know the true limits of the authority of a legislature is to demand an impossibility. The maxim that "ignorance of law excuseth no one" is here inapplicable. The officer does not rely on the statute as law, but on the statute as a fact — as an order or declaration of a body which he is bound to obey. To reply with the fiction that such statute is as if it never had been is a confession of weakness. Overruling an act of legislature is a co-ordinate department. It would be, therefore, highly unbecoming in a subordinate official to deny validity to a statute. To compel him to such a decision is to abandon a cardinal principle of constitutional interpretation. In view of these objections, one would think that the liability attached to officers who exceed their common-law jurisdiction should not be extended in this country to express statutory additions to their jurisdiction in which the legislature has exceeded its powers. Harvard Law Review. IT CHINESE CRIMINAL LAW. T is well known that there is very little mercantile law in China, and it is therefore the more remarkable that Chinese merchants are distinguished for the strict integrity and fidelity with which they fulfil their contracts. The word of a Chinese merchant is as good as his bond. ExAttorney-General Rosendale, one of our most eminent Albany lawyers, who recently made a tour in the Orient, tells us that it was the common testimony of Americans and Europeans transacting business there that it was so rare as to be almost an unknown thing for a Chinese merchant to attempt to defraud in either the quality or the price of his goods, or in the payment of his debts. This is one of the most admirable traits in the Chinese character, showing a native honesty not to be found in some of the other eastern races, and probably accounting for the fact that there is very little Chinese mercantile law because there is very little need of legislation to enforce mercantile obligations. But the Chinese criminal law is copious enough, and an octavo volume of nearly 700 pages has recently been devoted to its exposition by Mr. Ernest Alabaster, who is a barrister of the Inner Temple in London, an advanced student at Christ College, Cambridge, and a member of the Chinese customs service. Among other items of curious and interesting information in this book, it appears that it is not a crime to kill a robber who enters the house at night, but it is a light crime to kill him if he enters in the daytime. To kill a man who is robbing a field by day is a capital offense, but if by night, the act is, in a measure, justifiable. A robber may be killed in self-defense, and in China you are justified in killing the man who is It is a greater desecrating your father's grave. crime to wound with a pistol than with a sword. Robbery from relations is not regarded so seriously as from others, for, from the Chinese point of view, if one steals from his relative he is merely taking what is more or less his own by ties of kindred, and is guilty rather of breach of good manners than of actual crime. There are rigorous penalties for wrecking. Receivers of stolen goods are often worse than the thief. Breach of trust is treated with leniency, extortion with severity. Forgery is looked upon as a species of larceny. Oaths are not required in a Chinese court, and, therefore, perjury gets off easily. Coffins must not be opened after they are once closed. The principal punishments in China are slicing of the body in pieces, decapitation, strangulation, transportation, servitude, the bastinado, the cangue or wooden frame around the neck, fetters, branding, and fines and forfeitures. Some of these punishments seem cruel and barbarous, but are probably only resorted to in cases of extreme depravity, for it is one of the maxims in the philosophy of Chinese government that the nation must be governed by moral agency in preference to physical force. It has been said of the Turkish government that it is a despotism tempered by assassination; but the doctrine in China is that the services of the wisest and ablest men in the nation are indispensable to its good govern |