different. It must have been intended as a restric tion upon the legislative authority. We have no doubt that if the Legislature of this State should un dertake to prescribe for any offence against the laws the punishment of burning at the stake, breaking at the wheel, etc, it would be the duty of the courts to pronounce upon such attempt the condemnation of the Constitution. The question is now to be answered whether the legislative act here assailed is subject to the same condemnation. Certainly it is not so on its face; for although the mode of death described is conceded to be unusual, there is no common knowl edge or consent that it is cruel. It is a question of fact whether an electrical current, of sufficient inten sity and skilfully applied, will produce death without unnecessary suffering. Is this a question open to the investigation of the court when called upon to decide the validity of the law in question? Or must it be presumed to have been determined by the Legisla ture in favor of the mode of punishment prescribed? for the first time in the history of jurisprudence has a court been called upon to enter upon such investigation." The Judge suggests that it could safely be pre sumed that the Legislature had sufficiently investi gated the nature of punishment before passing the law, and reviews the work of the committee which investigated methods of capital punishment. After reviewing the experiments made upon animals by electricity and accidental deaths of men through the same instrumentality, the Judge concludes : — "The light of the scientific evidence in this case is sufficient, as we think, to remove every reasonable doubt that the passage of a current of electricity, of a certain well-determined intensity, through the vital parts of the body, under chosen conditions of contact and resistance, must result in instant death. If the question were of the advisability of the change of the mode of inflicting capital punishment, the discus sion might be prolonged. As we are confined to the question of constitutionality, we deem further discus sion unnecessary. The order dismissing the writ of habeas corpus and remanding the prisoner must be affirmed." An interesting report on the " solicitor's pro fession in England " has been read before the Paris Academy of Moral and Political Sciences by M. de Franqueville. The learned Academician de scribed the gradual extinction of what Dr. Johnson called the " fell attorney," who was always sup posed to be prowling for prey in the region of Lincoln's Inn and the Strand. Of the solicitors who have replaced the functionaries satirized by
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the Sage of Fleet Street, M. de Franqueville says that there are about three thousand of them in London and sixteen thousand in the provinces. The French Legist, however, is at a loss to account for the continual increase in the number of soli citors, particularly as the profession is rather diffi cult of access, and the expense as well as the length of time required to prepare for it ought to preclude many from entering it. M. de Franque ville is of opinion that at a not very distant date a fusion will be effected between the duties of barristers and solicitors. — Irish Law limes.
The New York State Bar Association held its thirteenth annual meeting at Albany on January 21 and 22. The Annual Address was delivered by Robert G. Ingersoll, his subject being " Crimes against Criminals." This Association is in a flourishing condition, and has rooms in the State Capitol building, where are to be found many things of great interest to visitors. Among them may be mentioned the original writing-desk which was placed in the executive chamber of the old Capitol when that building was first opened, at which sat Governor Tompkins from 1807 to 18 16. DeWitt Clinton succeeded him, and used that desk from 1816 to Feb. 11, 1828, with the exception of three years, when Joseph C. Yates was the incumbent, from 1822 to 1824 inclusive. Martin Van Buren suc ceeded Clinton until 1829, when he resigned on being appointed Secretary of Stale under Jackson. The desk was then used by all the succeeding governors, down to and through Horatio Seymour's first administration, ending Jan. t, 1854. There, too, is the finely executed bust of Abra ham Van Vechten, a great Albany lawyer, who gave the Albany Bar the prestige of having one of its sons the first who signed the roll and took the oath of office as an attorney of the Supreme Court of the State. There is also a life-like portrait of Ambrose Spencer, the greatest of New York's judicial offi cers, a brother-in-law of DeWitt Clinton; the por traits of the great revisers of the New York statutes, John C. Spencer, Benjamin F. Butler, and John Duer; the fine portrait of that distinguished judge and scholar and Chief Justice of the State, John Savage, and an excellent portrait of Aaron Burr. There is an interesting collection of old court t
