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Editorial Department.

themselves. Workmen and contractors for build ings and all who practise other professions, and contractors for baths are entirely prohibited from agreeing together that no one may complete a work contractedfor by another, or that a person may pre vent one luho has contractedfor a workfrom finish ing it : full liberty is given to any one to finish a work begun and abandoned by another, without apprehension of loss, and to denounce all acts of this kind without fear and without costs. And if any one shall presume to practise a monopoly, let his property be forfeited, and himself condemned to perpetual exile. And in regard to theprincipals of other professions, if they shall venture in the future to fix a price upon their merchandise, and to bind themselves by agreements not to sell at a lower price, let them be condemned to pay 40 pounds of gold. Your Court shall be condemned to pay 50 pounds of gold if it shall happen through avarice, negligence, or any other misconduct, the provisions of this salutary constitution for the prohibition of monopolies and agreements among the different bodies of merchants, shall not be carried into ef fect." — Candian Law Times. The Emperor seems to have been called upon to grapple with the same social questions which con front us to-day, and he certainly appears to have been equal to the occasion. Have we a Zeno among us?

FACETIÆ.

39

"Non dormientibus leges subvetiiunt," I read, And got this fine old maxim well planted in my head; But soon I learned it had been held, All in the Mass. Report, That passenger in sleeping-car Could action bring in tort. "De minimis non curat lex" I 'd read in many a book : So with ideas full well enlarged for mighty things I 'd look; But when for ten cents suit was brought For shirking fare on car, I thought our dear old mother Lex Amavit minima .' "The law doth not approve delay :" so runs the Latin phrase, And so with youthful ardor I would try to shun delays; But soon enlarged ideas I got From elders at the bar, Who, when I 'd efforts make to haste, Would loudly laugh, Ha! ha! "Within a Court of Equity with clean hands one must come:" A rule which should apply to all, but only does to some; For oft when gazing round the bar, I 've seen most " awful paws" Whose owners still got Equity, Its remedies and laws.

LEGAL MAXIMS. A SONG. AIR: " CALIFORNIA BILL." Oh, Themis! goddess of the law, to whom we tow the knee! Thy precepts and thy maxims we study faithfully : We con them o'er with rev'rend care; But still I must submit, That in the practice of the law They sometimes fail to hit. Chorus.

But, desperandum nil7 Oh, desperandum nil.' Tramp bravely on, my brothers, in The grand old legal mill!

"Wherever marriage is, in truth, a dowry yon will find :" In early youth this pretty phrase full greatly pleased my mind; But sometime after knot was tied, I looked her assets o'er, And found my wife had quite forgot This little form of law. "For every wrong a remedy the law doth sure provide :" So I believed until, in fact, the truth of this I tried; But when " poor debtor," richly dressed, Snapped fingers in my face, Within this phrase a fallacy I thought that I could trace.