Señor Jose Eugene E. Bernal, the well-known Cuban lawyer, and one of the founders of the automonist party, is dead.
Alexander McCue, Assistant Treasurer of the United States, died at Brooklyn, N. Y., on April 2. He was born at Metamora, Mexico, in 1826, and graduated from Columbia College in 1845. Three years later he was admitted to the bar, and began his practice in Brooklyn. In 1861, 1862, 1867, and 1868 he was corporation counsel for that city, and from 1870 until 1885 was one of the judges of the City Court. The latter position he resigned when President Cleveland tendered him the appointment of Solicitor of the United States Treasury at Washington. On the death of Professor Baird, in 1887, the President gave to Judge McCue the vacant position of United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries.
REVIEWS.
Johns Hopkins University Studies, seventh
series, IV. — This last number of this interesting
series is a sketch of the Municipal History of
New Orleans," by William W. Howe. Beginning
with the foundation of the city, in 17 18, the writer
follows its history through the French and Spanish
regimes until 1803, when Louisiana was ceded to
the United States, and from that date up to the
present time. A curious experiment in city affairs was attempted in 1836, when the territory
of New Orleans was divided into three separate
municipalities, each having a distinct government
with many independent powers, yet with a Mayor
and General Council, with a certain superior authority. It was the idea of local self-government
pushed to an extreme. It existed for sixteen years,
and during its existence many important public
improvements were made.
The charter of 1870, vesting the control of the city's affairs in the Mayor and seven Administrators, is one worthy of study by the advocates of reform in municipal government. The plan seems to have worked admirably in New Orleans, satisfy ing every one but the politicians.
The following remarks of Hon. Thomas M. Cooley in a paper on the " Comparative Merits of Written Prescriptive Constitutions," published in the March number of the Harvard Law' Review, are, to say the least, significant. Speaking of interstate commerce, he says : —
"It may be that by and by the federal legislature,
surveying the field of interstate commerce, and taking
note how State commerce encroaches upon and in
termingles with it, crowding it in the same vehicles
on the same roads, sharing with it in the same expenses, the rates which are imposed on the one necessarily affecting the rates that can be accepted on the
other, and being handled at the same time by the
same hands, under the same official control, will
come to the conclusion that a separate regulation
of State commerce must necessarily be to some
extent at least, and may be to a large extent, inconsistent with complete federal regulation of the commerce that is interstate. Should that conclusion be
reached, the federal legislature is not unlikely to take
to itself complete regulation of the whole."
What will our railroad corporations say to this?
The Chicago Law Times for April contains an
admirable portrait of William Blackstone accompanied by a sketch of his life. "The Woman
Lawyer," by Dr. Louis Frank, is continued; the
"Blair Amendment to the Federal Constitution"
is discussed by Charles B. Waite. and there is an
interesting paper on " The Death of Young Harry
Vane," by Judge Elliott Anthony. The Law
Times is certainly one of the most readable of our
exchanges, and is always heartily welcomed.
We have received an able and exhaustive paper on " Legislative Control over Private Corporations," by T. Gold Frost, LL.B., of the Minneapolis Bar. The same paper is published in the March number of the Columbia Law Times.
To the March number of the Chicago Law
Journal Dr. H. N. Moyer contributes an interest
ing paper on the " .Relation of Insanity to Crime,"
in which he advances the two propositions : first,
"that habitual criminals are moral imbeciles; second, that the scale of punishments now in vogue
is not the best plan of dealing with crime."
"The moral imbecile," he says, " cannot refrain
from crime, and is therefore not deterred by pun-
