Harbor Obstructions and Submarine Explosives. controversy over the will of Madame Jumel (better known as the wife of Aaron Burr, in his old and impecunious days). Also the main counsel for the validity of the will of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, the legal assault upon which, involving an hundred millions of dollars, occupied world-wide at tention for over a year, and which extended Mr. Clinton's more or less local professional reputation to .a national one. His enlarged experience had also fitted him to become an acknowledged juris-consult, and his judgment was largely sought in family and business matters. He was compelled to decline unimportant legal con troversies, and to utterly leave the field of criminal jurisprudence; and indeed he was the last of the Barons among leaders of the criminal bar, into the precincts of which through simplified codes of penal law and penal procedures and ready-reckoning ency clopaedias, a crowd of amateur, and, for a great part, unscrupulous attorneys had broken. Indeed the defense of criminals in New York City is said by many in its Bar Institute to have ceased as part of a profession and to have become a trade. The curious legal experiences of the Italian girl Maria Barberina — exploited recently in all the news papers — may be cited as an instance of the charge. A case, by the way, which became a curious instance of the method by which a
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court allowed experts in insanity to usurp the functions of a jury and adjudicate for jurors as their mouthpieces whether an ac cused was sane or insane. During his entire professional career Mr. Clinton bore himself so tactfully, unobtru sively and courteously as to become an uni versal favorite with bench and bar. He was singularly devoid of vanity or self-conscious ness. To the junior bar he was always ac cessible and indulgent. Within the past year he issued under the imprimatur of the Harper publishers an ele gant volume, comprising four hundred pages, that he entitled, " Extraordinary Cases," being, as his preface indicates, such causes celebres (in many of which he participated) as possess peculiar popular as well as pro fessional interest. These are enlivened by pertinent comment and narratives in true feuilletonish style; and in his pleadings, speeches and briefs, Mr. Clinton, as in this volume, showed himself to be a master of a vigorous Saxon style. In the legal career of Henry Laurens Clinton, as herein imperfectly outlined, are to be observed striking lessons for the young lawyer of the value of pluck and plod, and conscientious devotion to his profession, when attended by a high sense of honor. For during that long career never a breath was raised against his honor or probity.
HARBOR OBSTRUCTIONS AND SUBMARINE EXPLOSIVES. Bv John H. Fow. THE question of the right of Spain to protect Havana harbor by the use of explosives, and by other means to blockade the port is not a new one, and this country has had diplomatic relations about the subject. In 1861, during the Civil War, this coun try maintained the right of municipal closure
of its ports in the hands of the Confederates. Lord John Russell, the English Premier, refused to recognize our right to do so, and only after a long and trying correspondence between this country and England through Lord Lyons, the English Minister, was our right to do so recognized only on the ground of its being effectively maintained,
