out of the national revenue, because of the value to the county of systematic independent criticism. (2) Under the budget system, proposals for the expenditure of money can come only from the Administration; River and Harbor Bills are impossible. (3) When higher customs duties are proposed, no opportunity is given to importers to remove goods from bond before the taxes are enacted; the higher rate is levied at once, and if the proposed increase does not become law the excess is repaid to the importers. (4) The Postmastergeneral, although a business rather than a political official, is necessarily a member of Parliament, because "persistent questions in Parliament are one of the best means of bringing about reforms in a department which, by the very nature of its business, tends towards routine." Over there he must explain if he abandons pneumatic tubes because they do not pay, and then institutes an aërial mail service. (5) Each University in the United Kingdom is now represented in Parliament, and a college graduate can vote for a University member as well as for his local member. This use of an occupational as well as a geographical basis for representation is capable of wide extension. Trades-unions, bar associations, medical societies, railroad presidents, might each choose members of Congress. (6) Certain sinecure offices exist in the Cabinet, to which it is usual to appoint men whose advice is desired but who do not wish to undertake definite departmental work. We need an office like the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for Colonel House.

ZECHARIAH CHAFEE, JR.

DISCUSSION OF PROPOSED AMENDMENT OF JUDICIARY ARTICLES OF CONSTITUTION OF TEXAS. Printed under direction of a resolution of the Texas State Bar Association. 1918. pp. 151.

The judicial organization of Texas, like that of many of our states, is very complicated. It includes the Supreme Court, Courts of Civil Appeals, Court of Criminal Appeals, District Courts, County Courts, Juvenile Courts, Criminal District Courts, Commissioners' Courts and Justices' Courts. The machine is cumbersome; and it is not strange that it takes years to carry a case through to a final decision. The Supreme Court of Texas is now several years four or five years - behind in its decisions. Certainly if justice is not denied, it is long delayed. For several years the question of reorganizing the courts of Texas has been agitated in that state. The reports of the State Bar Association are full of excellent suggestions, which have never been adopted. A thoroughgoing scheme of reorganization was presented at the meeting of the State Bar Association in July, 1918. The recently published "Discussion of Proposed Amendment of Judiciary Articles of Constitution of Texas" is a practical contribution to the subject of judicial reorganization. In each state the problem is of course somewhat different in its details, but in its essence it is the same all over the country. The solution lies in the direction of simplicity and of flexibility of organization; and the proposed amendment in Texas seems well adapted to reaching this solution.

There is always a difficulty in effecting a thoroughgoing reorganization. One difficulty is sometimes found in the vested interest of the existing incumbents of the judicial office. Any difficulty of this sort seems to be met in the proposed plan in Texas by taking care of the present judges and by increasing the emoluments and the dignity of the judicial office. It is sometimes thought by the man in the street that the lawyers also have a vested interest in retaining an organization and method which result in large business for the lawyers. In truth, as is suggested in the "Discussion," "the rightful compensation of lawyers is enormously decreased, their labors increased, and the scope of their useful activities limited by the intolerable expense, com

plications, delays, and uncertainties inherent in the system.' The only real difficulty is in the natural inertia inherent in human nature, and in particular too often in the legal mind.

To the "Discussion" is appended an interesting address by Dean Roscoe Pound of the Harvard Law School on "Judicial Organization." In 1906 Dean Pound first blazed the path which has been followed by law reformers ever since. Now, if ever, as peace again settles down upon the country, there is a duty and an opportunity to carry through a long needed legal housecleaning. AUSTIN W. SCOTT.

CODE PRACTICE IN NEW YORK. By H. Gerald Chapin, Professor of Law in Fordham University. New York: Baker, Voorhis and Company. 1918. pp. xxx, 530.

The numerous and far-reaching amendments to the New York Code of Civil Procedure during the past decade have created an imperative need for a concise exposition of code practice as it is to-day in New York. More than fifteen years have passed since the publication of the last short treatise of New York practice-Miller's "Introduction to Practice" (1903), and over seventeen years since the publication of the only other works of a similarly brief character, Disbrow's "Summary of the Code," and Alden's "Handbook of the Code" all books essentially limited to the use of students. Professor Chapin's concise treatise, covering the subject down to October 1, 1918, is, therefore, most opportune.

The volume is unique in code literature in that it is at once a compact and comprehensive handbook of civil procedure, so simplified in style and material that it is admirably fitted for the student's needs, and yet of such wide scope and thorough treatment that it meets the demand of the lawyer for a handy reference work on practice.

The twenty chapters of the book, following a brief introduction sketching in merest outline the historical development of the code, cover the general field of civil procedure in New York. The logical arrangement suggests a threefold division: — first, the setting, - "The Courts and their Jurisdiction," "Judges, Attorneys, and Other Officers," "Actions and Proceedings," "The Parties;" second, the theme - the action carried from its commencement, through preparation for trial; the trial, and subsequent proceedings to appeal; and third, -a provost guard division, as it were, gathering in such straggling subjects as, the particular actions, state writs, special proceedings, and proceedings in the Surrogates' Court. There is a table of cases covering several pages and a good index.

The style is direct, clear and forceful, well adapted to the simple presentation of this highly technical subject. Professor Chapin is to be commended for his success in adhering closely to the wording of the code and yet producing a very readable book.

The various code sections and the provisions of the Consolidated Laws bearing upon the particular topic under discussion are brought together, and the effect of the important decisions upon the practice involved is stated in a few words, followed by the citation. The placing of all citations in parenthesis in the body of the text is quite in keeping with the character of the work as a resumé of code practice. Documents and papers employed in the various stages of code procedure are illustrated under the appropriate subjects by well-drawn forms, several having been adapted from actual cases in which they had been passed upon by the courts.

The chief criticism of Professor Chapin's book is that it is wholly neutral. It carries no message in favor of or against the present day practice under the New York Civil Code. Neither by foreword nor by footnote observations

does the author attempt a critique of code provisions, or the court decisions interpreting them, and the great struggle which has been waged during recent years by leading members of the New York Bar for a simplified procedure analogous to the English system of practice under the Judicature Acts is completely ignored. In short, Professor Chapin has given us an instantaneous picture of New York practice under the Code of Civil Procedure as it existed on the date his book went to press. To many that will undoubtedly appeal as a recommendation rather than a detriment, but in view of the present widespread agitation for procedural reform in New York this colorless attitude cannot but be disappointing to the thoughtful and forward-looking members of the bar.

The title "Code Practice in New York" is broader in scope than the content of the work, which is limited to an exposition of the practice under the Code of Civil Procedure, and does not discuss the Code of Criminal Procedure. Professor Chapin has, however, produced a thoroughly useful book, and a refreshing one in that it is distinctly restricted to material pertinent to the subject. GEORGE J. THOMPSON.

THE PROBLEM OF ADMINISTRATIVE AREAS. BY H. J. Laski. Northampton: Smith College Studies, Vol. IV, No. 1.

FIRST VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW BY GERMANY. By L. Renault. New York: Longmans.

HISTORY OF ECONOMIC LEGISLATION IN IOWA. By I. L. Pollock. Iowa: Iowa Historical Society.

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. By Edward Jenks. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1918. pp. viii, 369.

PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION. By Harris Hawthorne Wilder and Bert Wentworth. Boston: The Gorham Press.

GERMAN LEGISLATION FOR THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES OF BELGIUM. Index to Series X-XIII. Edited by Charles H. Huberich and A. Nicol-Speyer. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

CONNECTICUT WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION COMMISSION DIGEST. Board of Compensation Commissioners. Meriden: The Journal Publishing Com

pany.

A SOURCE-BOOK OF MILITARY LAW AND WAR TIME LEGISLATION. War Department Committee on Education and Special Training. St. Paul: West Publishing Company.

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND ITS PROBLEMS. By L. Oppenheim. New York: Longmans.

THE POLITICAL WORKS OF JAMES I. With an Introduction by Charles Howard McIlwain. Harvard Political Classics. Cambridge: Harvard Uni

versity Press.

BRITISH-AMERICAN DISCORDS AND CONCORDS. Compiled by the History Circle. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

HE British Crown covers a multitude of sins. "The King,"

THE

says Blackstone in a famous sentence,1 "is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong; he can never mean to do an improper thing; in him is no folly or weakness." A long history lies behind those amazing words; and if, as to Newman,2 they seem rather the occasion for irony than for serious political speculation, that is perhaps because their legal substance would have destroyed the argument he was anxious to make. In England, that vast abstraction we call the state has, at least in theory, no shadow even of existence; government, in the strictness of law, is a complex system of royal acts based, for the most part, upon the advice and consent of the Houses of Parliament. We technically state our theory of politics in terms of an entity which has dignified influence without executive power. The King can do no wrong partly because, at a remote period of history, the place where alone the doing of wrong could best be righted was his place, and had won preeminence only after a long struggle with the courts of lesser lords. The King's courts became the supreme resort of justice simply because, in his hands, that commodity

1 I COм., 1813 ed., 254.

2 THE PRESENT POSITION OF CATHOLICS IN ENGLAND, 27 f.

was more purely wrought and finely fashioned than elsewhere; and since it is clearly unintelligent to make a man judge in his own. cause, since, moreover, the royal judges do not, in legal fact, conceal the royal presence, there seems to have been no period of history in which the King could be sued in the courts of the realm.

It is difficult to say at what precise period this non-suability of the Crown passed into infallibility. The Tudor despotism seems to have been that critical period of transition when learned lawyers like Plowden will talk what Maitland has aptly termed "metaphysiological nonsense;" 3 and the aggressive Coke will dispatch the Crown into a corporation sole of a kind but rarely known to previous English history. Not, indeed, that men are not troubled by the consequences of that dual personality the Tudor lawyers called into being. Thomas Smith did not write aimlessly of an English commonwealth; 5 and that public which the royal burglary of 1672 forced into responsibility for the National Debt shows, clearly enough, that the fusion of Crown and state is not yet complete. Even in the nineteenth century Acts of Parliament will be necessary to show that behind the robes of a queen can be discerned the desires of a woman.7

It is probable that the reemergence of the dogma of divine right exercised a potent influence on this development. Certainly men could not have encountered the speech of James and his eager adherents, or the logic of that continental absolutism which is merely summarized in Bossuet, without being affected by them. Even when the Revolution of 1688 destroys its factual basis, it has become capable of transmutation into a working hypothesis of government; and anyone can see that Blackstone, who best sums up the political evolution of this creative period, writes "Crown" where the modern political philosopher would use the term "State." The vague hinterland of ancient prerogative went also, doubtless, to show that the Crown is a thing apart. The privilege of the King's household leaped to the eyes. His

8

▲ Ibid., 244-45.

5 Ibid., 253.

6 I MACAULAY, HISTORY OF ENGLAND, Everyman's edition, 170.

7 25 & 26 VICT. c. 37 (1862); 36 & 37 VICT. c. 61 (1873).

8 2 Co. INST. 631, 4 ibid., 24; Rex v. Foster, 2 Taunt. 166-67 (1809); Rex v. Moulton, 2 Keb. 3.