'•IGNORANCE of the law is no excuse," said the master of the rolls, the late Sir George Jessel, to the writer, some years ago, who retorted by asking the learned judge: "Can you find me a man who does really know the law?" The judge laughed and bade him ask something easier. Mr. Chalmers, par liamentary counsel to the English treasury, has recently made a pronouncement which is of interest to those who have had any deal ing with the law. There is an absolutely tragic amount of humor in Mr. Chalmers' declaration that: "The present statute-book is now compressed for the general reader into the moderate compass of twenty-two thousand pages." This is bad enough, but worse remains behind; for when the con scientious subject of the English King, whose duty it is to know the law, has mas tered the twenty-two thousand pages of statute law, there still remain over 1800 vol umes, containing more than a million pages of common law judicial decisions to be as similated. Should despair seize the unfortu nate litigant, he may be consoled by Mr. Chalmers' remark that common law is made more accessible to the public by some two thousand text-books. No wonder that jus tice is always depicted as a blindfold deity, for what human eyes could stand the strain of the study of the millions of pages men tioned by Mr. Chalmers? Ignorance of the law may be inexcusable, but knowledge of the law is an almost physical impossibility. The statute law with its 22,000 pages is not the largest book in the world, for there is in the British Museum, London, a single volume six feet in height by three feet three inches in width which requires four strong men to lift it. Perhaps the largest and most comprehensive work in the world is the En cyclopedia of the Literature of China which consists of 5020 large volumes and covers a period of twenty-eight centuries, from iioo B. C. to 1700 A. D. One complete set of this work to that date can also be found in the British Museum; the continuation to the year 1869, consisting of 160 additional volumes, was destroyed in the Boxer troubles of a vear or so ago.
NEW LAW BOOKS.
// is the intention of The Green Bag to have its book reviews written by competent reviewers. The usual custom of magazines is to confine book notices to books sent in for review. At the request of subscribers, however, The Green Bag will be glad to review or notice any recently published law book, whether re ceivedfor review or not.
CASES ON INTERNATIONAL LAW. By /. B. Scott, ]. U. D., Dean of the College of Law, University of Illinois. Boston: The Boston Book Company. 1902. (lxvii-f961 pp.) A mere glance at this work would be quite enough to enable the reviewer to say that it is indispensable to the person interested in international law, whether he be beginner or expert. Wh'at cannot be seen at a glance, though it is equally true, is that the book is of unusual interest and value to the general practitioner. To begin at what has long been the begin ning of any discussion of international law, the general practitioner has heard of the analytical jurist's doubt whether this subject is entitled to be called law at all. To the general practitioner this doubt may seem to be largely of a theoretical nature, but he probably has a related doubt of his own. a doubt whether international law. whether properly called law or not. is administered in courts. This book is an object lesson that removes simultaHeously and promptly both the theoretical and the practical doubt. Here are some nine hundred pages of cases selected from the decisions of English courts and of the State and Federal courts of the United States: and in each case the court de termined the rights of the parties by ascer taining and recognizing and administering international law precisely as if the subject were as determinable and as binding as the law of contracts. What the analytical jurist will say in the face of such proof is matter of speculation; but for the practising lawyer seeing is believing. Yet even when the practical lawyer learns that international law—or at least part of it—is real law, and that as such it is admin-
