by the State and having charge of violations of certain State laws, and should not be the adviser of another board also created by the State and charged with the same duties.

While their jurisdiction and their duties are territorially limited to the city of Newport, these duties are clearly of general concern, and they discharge a State function rather than a municipal function.

It follows that the State, having thus appointed these officers (for the preservation of the public peace) by the concurrent action of the executive and the senate, and having conferred upon them the gravest duties under severe penalty for neglect or refusal to discharge those duties, is bound in law no less than in morals to furnish these officers with all adequate and necessary means and agencies for the discharge of the duties so imposed. And among these agencies and means is competent advice as to the scope of the duty so imposed and the means of discharging it.

Nor is it a sufficient reply to say that provision to this end may be wisely and safely left to the local authorities.

If experience of the recent past were lacking, it would nevertheless not be difficult to see that the due and orderly enforcement of the law is most likely to be hampered and interfered with by a division of the responsibility therefor between local and State agencies. These officers being thus created, the State ought not to be made dependent for the discharge of their duty upon local indifference or opposition, or those chance mutations in municipal politics often arising from causes as insubstantial in reality as they are ephemeral in their duration. For it is not unlikely that the local authorities may refuse to support voluntarily an officer by additional local taxation for the purpose of assisting officers appointed by the State, over whom they have no control and to whom they owe no such duty, but for whose compensation they alone are taxed. And this may be done without redress on the part of the board and without protection on the part of the State.

We are accordingly of the opinion that this board of police commissioners is a State board within the spirit as well as

within the letter of the act, and that the question submitted should be answered in the affirmative.

PARDON E. TILLINGHAST,

GEORGE A. WILBUR,

HORATIO ROGERS,

WILLIAM W. DOUGLAS,
EDWARD C. DUBOIS,

JOHN T. BLODGETT.

PROVIDENCE, R. I., April 30, 1901.

1. The defendant was indebted to the plaintiff in the sum of $58.48, and had
a claim against the plaintiff in the sum of $50, the value, as he claimed,
of property entrusted by him to the plaintiff and lost by the latter. The
plaintiff denied this liability. The defendant sent the plaintiff a check
for $8.48 and a receipt for $50 in settlement. The check was stamped
"Good only if when properly endorsed in full of all demands to date
against [the defendant]." The plaintiff struck out these words and
cashed the check and returned the receipt, notifying the defendant that
he credited the sum paid on account. Upon action by the plaintiff for
the balance :-

Held, that, the amount due being in dispute, the acceptance by the plain-
tiff of the money offered in settlement amounted to an accord and satis-
faction.

2. Held, further, that the erasure on the check not having been made in
the presence of the defendant, being unknown to him at the time, and
the plaintiff not having notified him of the rejection of his offer, it did
not affect the nature of the transaction as an accord.

3. Held, further, that, although there is a technical difference between the
case of a controversy as to the amount of a plaintiff's bill and the case at
bar, where the dispute is as to a recoupment by the defendant, yet the
principle is the same, the essential fact being the existence of a dispute
as to the amount due. Hull v. Johnson, 66.

ACTIONS.

1. Under the provisions of Gen. Laws R. I. cap. 233, § 16, an action will
not lie in favor of a plaintiff to recover the double value of goods stolen

where the defendant pleaded nolo contendere to the indictment for larceny
and was thereupon placed under the control of a probation officer.
Within the meaning of the word as used in said section, a plea of nolo
contendere is not a conviction.

2. The plea of nolo contendere does not establish the fact of guilt for any
other purposes than that of the case to which it applies.

3. The placing of an offender in the custody of.a probation officer, under
the provisions of Pub. Laws R. I. cap. 664, after a plea of nolo contendere
does not amount to a sentence and judgment of the court upon the plea.
Doughty v. De Amoreel, 158.

See BENEFICIAL ASSOCIATIONS, 1; CONTRACTS, 1; INTOXICATING LIQ-
UORS, 1-2; PLEADING AND PRACTICE AT LAW, 1-2.

ADVERSE POSSESSION.

See EASEMENTS, 2.

AFFIDAVITS.

See PLEADING AND PRACTICE AT LAW, 11.

AGENCY.

See LIFE INSURANCE, 5.

ALTERATION OF PROCESS.

See WRITS, 1.

AMENDMENT OF BILL IN EQUITY.
See EQUITY PLEADING, 2-3.

APPEAL.

FROM PROBATE COURT.

See PROBATE LAW AND PRACTICE, 2-3.

FROM TOWN COUNCILS.

1. The charter of a street railway company provided that the conditions
under which it could operate its road were to be fixed by the town coun-
cil. No appeal was provided for in the charter :-

Held, that an appeal would not lie, under Gen. Laws R. I. cap. 248, § 1,
from an administrative order of the town council, which it had the au-
thority to pass.

2. Gen. Laws R. I. cap. 248, § 1, does not confer a general right of appeal
from every order of a town council, but merely limits the time within
which such right, otherwise given, must be exercised.

Citing Walsh v. Town Council, 18 R. I. 88, and Brown v. District, 21 R. I.
503. Pawcatuck Ry. Co. v. Town Council, 307.

See PLEADING AND PRACTICE AT LAW, 21, 24.

APPORTIONMENT.

1. A testamentary devise in trust directed the trustee out of the income to
pay all taxes, rates, assessments and expenses for insurance and repairs,
and other expenses and outgoings of every nature upon or in respect of
the trust estate, and to pay over the residue of the income to X. for life,
and upon her decease to convey the trust estate in fee :-
Held, that the word "assessments," from its association, did not include
assessments for benefits to the estate resulting from the new lay-out of a
street, or for the construction of sewers; and that such expenses should
be apportioned between the life tenant and remainder-men in the pro-
portion which the value of the life estate bore to the value of the whole
estate.

2. Held, further, that where an assessment against certain unimproved
lots of the estate had been paid by the trustee out of the proceeds of cer-