"The only kind of duress which justifies a breach of treaty is the coercion of a sover eign or plenipotentiary to such an extent as to induce him to enter into arrangements which he would never have made but for fear on account of his personal safety. Such was the renunciation of the Spanish crown ex torted by Napoleon at Bayonne in 1807, from Qnarles IV. and his son, Ferdinand. The
people of Spain broke no faith when they re fused to be bound by it and rose in insurrec tion against Joseph Bonaparte, who had been placed upon the throne."1 So far as we are aware, it has not been alleged that Japan has used such methods of coercion in the present instance. 1 Lawrence, pp. 287-88. Cf. Hall, p. 326.
THE PRACTICE OF LAW IN NEW YORK CITY AS IT APPEARED TO A LAW STUDENT. BY S. MURRAY, LL.B., 1903. I HAD a letter from one of our giant cap italists whose commercial wars extend even to European soil and under it. But I was obliged, none the less, to win a secretary's visé before I could see the busy person to whom my note ran. He appeared at the end of the passage, a stoutish, well-dressed man, with a face, given a normal nose, like Doyle's figure on the cover of Punch. Holding a bundle of papers in his hand, he waved me on, and seemed to be pawing the ground with impatience, so that I had difficulty in keep ing from running. Everyone "runs" in New York, even those engaged in a profession notorious, since Hamlet, for its delays. Law clerks have no union; they work day and night. I noticed in one office a switch girl studying stenography with a receiver fastened to her head; a call boy in another would dart like a fire-horse from the handwriting he was practising in his copy book, when the bell sounded. The whole place is ait white heat. The man who grasped my hand and dragged me into his partner Bramwell's of fice, makes more money than any other lawyer;"accordingly he is often called the leader of the New York bar. Not much over fifty years of age, he has pulled his way up from
the bottom by a series of remarkable mental strainings. If the climb is interrupted by break-downs in health, it is resumed with ferocity after six months of rest. His clerks call this strange perversion of the human species "the wild man" and scatter at his approach; call boys and stenographers duck when he appears, and the whole office force trembles with an increased power put on at his advent. His confidence in himself is as great as his ability. Once he is reported to have said, when the wisdom of his clerks could not burrow the authority he needed, Gad, I'm not the leader of the bar yet!" But these are better samples of his talk, "Bet you twenty-five, Bramwell, I win Smith v. Jones. Are you on, Bramwell?" and, to his assistant managing clerk, a year's graduate of the law school, "When does the case of— come up?" "I think it's the tenth, sir." "You think, you!—You have no business to think. I think; it's oiir business to know." He has no social relations with his people. Even his partners are without glimpses of him for davs at a time. Half a vear after he
