Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/401

NOTES. 375 the act of 1892 conferring upon women the right to vote for school com- missioners, was unconstitutional. Under substantially the same provision in the Ohio Constitution, the Supreme Court of that State, in The State v. Constantine^ 42 Ohio St. 437, held that a statute providing for the elec- tion of four police commissioners and permitting each elector to vote for but two, was unconstitutional. Judge Dillon comes to the conclusion that an act providing for minority representation, in which the right of all electors to vote for every elective officer should be provided for, and which should give effect to the voice of the majority, would not violate the Constitution. This apparently points to some system of cumulative voting as the proper one to be adopted in order to avoid constitutional objections. Experiments in that direction, as Judge Dillon says, have occasionally been made. In England an act passed in 1870 provided that in the election of school boards " every voter shall be entitled to a number of votes equal to the number of members of the school board to be elected, and may give all such votes to one candidate, or distribute them among the candidates, as he sees fit." The similar provisions of the Illi- nois Constitution relative to the election of members of the House of Rep- resentatives, is one of the rare instances of the adoption in this country of a scheme of minority representation. Liability for Rent after Destruction of Premises. — Well known principles of the law of real property are extended to decidedly novel cir- cumstances in the interesting recent case of Waite v. O' Neil, 76 Fed. Rep. 408. 'I^ie plaintiff owned land bordering on the Mississippi River, at a place where a narrow strip of low land lay along the shore at the foot of a high bluff. She leased to the defendants *' the river front and landing in front of the lot, with ample space for a roadway along the landing." By a sudden and extraordinary change in the course of the river, the strip of low land and a part of the bluff were swept away ; so that the river now flows at the foot of a bank over sixty feet high, so undermined that no vessels could safely approach it, and quite incapable of being made into a safe landing place. More than this, a system of works has been erected in the river along this shore by persons acting with the authority of the lessor, to repair the damage done by the stream, which would entirely prevent any access to the bank. The lessor now insists, among other demands, on the payment of the stipulated rent. In considering this de- mand, the first question to be decided is as to the nature of the property leased. The court considers, having regard to the whole language of the lease and all the circumstances, that no portion of the land was leased, but only an incorporeal right appurtenant to the land, to have a " land- ing " on the river front, with a right of way to it. According to the well established though severe rule of law that no impairment of the value of property will release the lessee from his liability to pay the stipulated rent, the lessees in this case must pay full rent for the right leased to them, however little it is now worth ; unless, indeed, they can show that this right, the subject matter of the lease, has been totally destroyed. In the latter case the liability for rent is necessarily extinguished, as is shown by the cases of a lease of a room in a building afterwards burnt down. Graves v. Berdajt^ 26 N. Y. 498. Strictly speaking, if the lessees acquired all the lessor's rights as a riparian owner, such rights would appear to be still in existence, though