mote the health, comfort, safety or welfare of society. The strongest argument in this case seems to have been made upon the proposition that the law was sustainable on the ground that it operated in the prevention of cruelty to animals, the claim in this re spect being that as the health and comfort of animals is one of the recognized subjects of legislative control, so likewise their health and comfort tend to promote the health, comfort and welfare of the community, and that the exercise of the power may be made to rest on broad humanitarian grounds. Much of the court's answer to this conten tion is worth repetition verbatim. "For centu ries horses have been shod and we may take notice that during that period no cruelty has resulted from the act which has caused com ment among men, or which has destroyed the usefulness of the animal, or in a sub stantial sense caused it pain or suffering. Indeed, it may be doubted whether more discomfort, pain and suffering have not been occasioned by the harness which it wears and by the food which it eats than by the shoes which it wears. Under such cir cumstances to attribute cruelty to animals by shoeing seems fanciful in the extreme. It may be said with as much foundation for the assertion that if the shoeing of horses can be considered as cruelty, so likewise can their harness, feeding, watering and clean ing be denominated as cruelty, for certainly as much suffering to the animal flows from such sources. To undertake the regulation of these subjects would inject into the body politic a paternalism which is repugnant to free institutions." PROXIMATE CAUSE. (LIVE WIRE v. FALL FROM LAIIPER.) PENNSYLVANIA SUPREME COURT.
An exemplification of the ever-vexing question of proximate cause is afforded by
Elliott v. Allegheny County Light Co., 54 Atlantic Reporter 278, the facts in which render the case worthy of notice though the principle involved has been familiar since long before the time of its notorious appli cation in the "Squib case." A painter, working on a ladder, fell from it, clutched at a live wire, was shocked thereby and brought suit against the electric light com pany which owned the wire, on the ground that his injuries were caused by defective insulation. The existence of the wire was held not to be in any sense the efficient re sponsible cause of the injury, the fall from the ladder being the proximate cause of all the injuries. WITNESS. (IMPEACHMENT — FORMER CONVIC TION — PARDON.) ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT.
• In Gallagher v. People, 71 Northeastern Reporter 842, the State offered in evidence the record of a former conviction of defend ant for the purpose of impeaching him as a witness, and his counsel thereupon offered to show that he had been pardoned, which the court refused to allow. The Supreme Court said, "The ruling was clearly right. Formerly a person who had been convicted of any crime was incompe tent to testify upon the trial of a criminal case, but that disability was removed by our statute, with the qualification that such con viction might be shown for the purpose of affecting his credibility, i Starr. & C. Ann. St. 1896, c. 38, div. 13. §6. p. 1397. Under the statute, the guilt or innocence of the de fendant of the crime for which he has been convicted, his punishment, his term of ser vice, etc., are wholly immaterial and incom petent. That he may have been pardoned proves nothing as to his credibility, and to permit evidence of that fact would simply be to introduce into the case a collateral issue "
