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anee with the Constitution and laws of the United States. They were used to enforce the laws of prohibiting the obstruction of the mails and conspiracies against inter-state commerce, and to secure the execution of judicial. processes of the Federal courts. The broader scope of Federal action at this time was due in part to a new interpretation as to what constituted an obstruction of the postal service. Formerly where strikers had cut out passenger and baggage cars from a mail train, but did not directly prevent the move ment of the postal cars, it had been assumed that they were not obstructing the postal service. But it was now held that interfer ence with any part of a mail train constituted an obstruction to the postal service. Another factor, however, in the extension of the field for the employment of the army was the re cent statute prohibiting conspiracies against commerce. The interpretation of President Cleveland as to the powers and duty of the executive under the circumstances was approved by the Supreme Court and by the Senate and House of Representatives in resolutions adopted by both bodies.
IT was to be expected, says The Kctv Jersey Law Journal for January, that ulti mately Christian Science would get into the courts, and it seems the first decision relating to the subject in New Jersey comes about in an odd way. Kate McCulloch, of Camden, being in feeble health, placed herself under the treatment of George Tompkins as a Christian Science healer, and in the course of the treatment gave him a power of attor ney to collect her moneys and invest the same. After a while she became dissati-ficd with his management and filed a bill in chancery, demanding an accounting. The defendant, in his plea, set up, inter alia, that she had agreed to allow him twenty per cent. on his collections. This the complainant de nied. In giving his decision in the case Vice Chancellor Gray says: "The defendant claims that he earned commissions by making col lections for the complainant by a combina
tion of letter-writing and a making of 'dem onstrations.' ... So far as the defendant's testimony explains what he calls a 'demon stration.' it appears to have consisted of locking himself in a room and devoting him self to the 'thought' of collecting the debts due to the complainant. The defendant testi fied that the parties who owed the complain ant were not in any way connected with the Christian Science Church. The influence which he exerted by 'thought' in collecting the money for the complainant was, there fore, enforced against unbelievers in Chris tian Science. The moving of the absent un believer to pay his debts probably required from the defendant a more intense application of healing power, entitling him, from his point of view, to a higher compensation for his labors." The court allowed him one hun dred dollars, "not because the defendant earned or deserved it, but because the com plainant consented to give it to him. 62 N. J. Eq. (17 Dick Ch.) 269. IN his President's address (printed in the Yale Law Journal for January) before the last meeting of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, C. LaRue Munson discussed the interesting question : "How far shall the justice and rights of the particular cause prevail over a strict application of established rules of law?" In the course of the address he says: Of the adherence to settled rules of law, it is admitted by all hands that certain legal principles have been established—although not all uniformly in every court of last resort —and. to those principles additions are con stantly being made, and so far as they may be conscientiously applied, must prevail; but it may well be asked where is the legal prin ciple that can stand the strain of time un'ess it be bottomed and fastened upon natural justice?—that which we call equity, because in this sense it is indeed "the correction of. that wherein the law by reason of its univer sality is deficient. Rules of law may be firmly declared, and to them we must bend the knee of obedience, but unless they have for their foundation a justice which rppeals to man's conscience, they are as unstable as the
