Leaves from an English Solicitor's Note-Book. Samuel Adams, George Clinton, Luther Martin- and Patrick Henry; and in respect to dangers from power vested in a central government over distant settlements, colonies or provinces, their instincts were always alive. Not a word escaped them to warn their countrymen that here was a power to threaten the landmarks of this federative Union, and with them the safeguards of popular and constitutional liberty; or that under this article there might be introduced, on our soif, a single government over a vast extent of country,—a government foreign to the persons over whom it might be exercised, and capable of binding those not represented, by statutes, in all cases whatever." 1 Of the three others one waived this ques tion and two upheld- the validity of the act. The discussion probably spoke the almost unanimous opinion of the South, and what also had been that of half the North up to the date of the troubles in Kansas, which
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brought the cry of "squatter sovereignty" so prominently into politics. Fifty years pass, and in the "Insular Cases a similar question divides the court again. There is now no great all-controlling party force like that furnished by the insti tution of slavery. The country is nearly equally divided in opinion as to the extent of Congressional authority over our new possessions. The Court was nearly equally divided. The Chief Justice and three of his associates held that it must be exercised in subordination to certain express provisions of the Constitution. The majority of the Justices took a different view, though they were not agreed as to the reasons for the judgment. Neither is the country agreed. The opportunism of the court was the opportunism of the people; disposed on the whole not to disapprove what has been done by a government struggling with a new and difficult situation, and more interested in the "condition" than in the "theory."
1 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 Howard's Reports, 505.
LEAVES FROM AN ENGLISH SOLICITOR'S NOTE-BOOK. XII. THE WRONG MRS. SIMPSON: A COMEDY OF PROFESSIONAL ERRORS. BY BAXTER BORRET. (Registered at Ottawa in accordance with the Canadian Copyright Aft.)
WHAT a grave responsibility is cast upon a solicitor who is called upon, at a few moments' notice, to make the will of a testator who is in extremis, and whom he has never known before! But, as I take it, his duty is clear; he must do his utmost to give effect to the instructions put before him, and leave the rest to Providence. It is a solemn responsibility cast upon him as a member of a learned profession, which he has no more right to shirk than has a sur geon who is called in to a case of sudden ac
cident, involving the issue of life or death (as for instance a severed artery). I was once sent for, in a great hurry, by a medical man in Georgetown, who was an oc casional client of mine, to draw the will of a lady who was a complete stranger to me, who had had an apoplectic seizure, and was then lying in articulo mords, but conscious and perfectly compos mentis (so the doctor assured me), and whose peace of mind could not be assured until her testamentary wishes had been put into legal form. I learned from
