Published Monthly, at 53.00 per annum.
Single numbers, 35 cents.
Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, Horace W. Fuller, isi Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of interest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetia, anecdotes, etc. THE GREEN BAG T^HE new field upon which we have entered
- ■ with " The Green Bag " seems to be an
attractive one to the legal fraternity, judging from the communications which have poured in upon us from prominent members of the profession. A well-known lawyer in New York writes : " I notice that you are to issue a magazine for the edification of the profession. Such a periodical will occupy a new and waiting field. Send it to me." From Pennsylvania, another prominent member of the bar, writes : " I am struck with the prospectus of ' The Green Bag.' One gets a bit of juice occasionally from American Law Jour nals, but the periodicals usually coming to the office are little more interesting than the average digest." And another correspondent says : " We have so many so-called useful things thrust upon our no tice in the way of voluminous reports of every thing, large and minute, that it is a relief to run across something that does not profess to be of any particular use." From Ohio an eminent judge writes : " Useless law books I have many, — useless because they are not entertaining. I see that ' The Green Bag ' is not only useless but enter taining. Them 's the feller I want." We might go on quoting in the same vein; but the extracts given show that the bar desires some thing more than the flood of digests poured upon them from month to month, and turns with a feel ing of relief to lighter and more entertaining legal literature. " All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," is as applicable to the wearied mind as to the exhausted body. We are glad to find our ideas in making this new departure so quickly and fully confirmed by a host of our legal brethren.
The writer of the sketch of Chief-Justice Fuller, which appeared in our January number, desires us to make the following correction in re gard to Daniel Fuller. In the paragraph con cerning him, in place of the words, " He mar ried Esther Fisher," it should read : " His father, Thomas Fuller second, married Esther Fisher, in 1668, who was the daughter of the proscribed patriot, Daniel Fisher, of Dedham, etc., . . . and sister of the bold Captain Daniel Fisher, who ' hated the tyrant,' Sir Edmund Andros," etc.
We trust our readers will not overlook the note at the head of our editorial department, and will send to the editor contributions for use in our columns. Almost every lawyer has some one subject in which he is particularly interested and upon which he would be glad to express his views. " The Green Bag " affords an excellent medium for com munication with his legal brethren. Many a good joke or anecdote is lost which might have been preserved, if jotted down at once upon the hear ing. The next good story that you hear, make a note of it, and send it to " The Green Bag."
LEGAL ANTIQUITIES. Courts of Requests (known also as Courts of Conscience) were first instituted in London by Henry VIII., and similar local tribunals were after ward established by Act of Parliament in other parts of the Kingdom; but they have all been super seded, long since, by the County Courts. The jurisdiction of these courts was originally limited to questions of debt or damage under ^os. but was afterward extended to questions under ^5. The design was to furnish a cheap and simple method of settling trivial cases; and the trials were con ducted before commissioners who appear to have been bound by no technical rules of law, but set tled the disputes submitted to them according to
