The Green Bag PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT 14.00 PER ANNUM. SINGLE NUMBERS 50 CENTS. Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, S. R. WRIGHTINGTON, 31 State Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of in terest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetiae, anecdotes, etc.
THE event of recent weeks of most interest to the Bar has undoubtedly been the impeach ment of a federal judge before the Senate of the United States. The elaborate machinery of impeachment and the infrequency of its occurrence would alone serve to attract the general public, but the importance of main taining the highest standard of integrity on the federal bench commands our attention. As evidence, moreover, of the unwisdom of appointing as federal judges men who are really alien to the districts over which they preside, the case has been, we think, of per manent value. A decline in the respect for the judiciary is lamented as a sign of the times by one of our correspondents, a former judge of Chicago. If this tendency exists it emphasizes the necessity of selecting as judges men who have the confidence of their com munities. It is to be noted that Judge Swayne's residence in the South prior to his elevation to the bench, had been very brief. This Tvas doubtless the real cause of his troubles, for the appointment of northern men as southern judges must eventually breed hos tility. For the broader policy of President Roosevelt rising above all party considerations and appointing able southern democrats in regions where republicans are social outcasts, the Bar owes a debt of gratitude that it should be glad to acknowledge. It is to be hoped that he has established a policy from which his successors will not dare to depart. The long delays after the Swayne case was first called to public notice and the somewhat perfunctory character of the Senate's proceed ings have detracted from the public interest. The newspaper comment has ranged from dis gust at the comparative insignificance of the charges to insistence upon the importance to
the judiciary of avoiding even the appearance of evil, and the hope is expressed that, if there have been lax practices in the matter of charging expenses on the part of other judges, the ventilation of this case will compel improvement. Judge Swayne has had, how ever, few vindicators. Though it was known to the press that Mr. Littlefield had opposed the resolution of impeachment, his reasons had not been widely published nor fully set forth, and his elaborate analysis of the evidence will doubtless surprise the reader as it did the editor. Congressman Littlefield whose portrait is our frontispiece, has been too conspicuous a figure in recent years in the National House of Representatives for us to add anything to the reader's information regarding his public career. One is likely to forget, however, in the prominence of the politician his real abil ity as a lawyer and his position as one of the leaders of the Bar of Maine. From 1889 to 1892 he served as Attorney General of the State. In the National House of Representa tives he has served upon the Judiciary Com mittee, and it is of especial interest in connec tion with his contribution to note that he was a dissenting member of the sub-committee which reported the Swayne Impeachment. THE so-called Beef Trust report of Commis sioner Garfield, the more important criminal investigation by the Attorney General, and the picturesque Kansas oil war are the most recent phases of the battle against the greatest economic development of our time, the elimi nation of individual competition. One might almost say the elimination of the individual, did not the names at once arise of the few individuals who in the public eye personify these larger units of modern commerce and labor. The doctrine of Professor Bigelow in our January issue of the duty of the law to follow business, bids all thoughtful lawyers study this conflict of the new and the old, in the confidence that in the courts will ulti-
