EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT consciously or unconsciously directed, has been the defining, with ever-increasing clearness, of the outlines and boundaries of this liberty, until to-day a citizen knows, with reasonable certainty, his personal rights, duties, and privileges. "But in the last fifty years there have come into existence a large number of artificial entities — i.e., corporations — which, by virtue of their character, have no inherent or original rights or duties. Their status depends sub stantially upon statute. The welfare of the country and the welfare of the vast majority of the citizens of the country are intimately connected with these artificial entities. Un certainty as to their rights, privileges, and duties is uncertainty as to the essential things that go to make up the happiness of the indi vidual citizen, and yet uncertainty is the one overshadowing fact that can be predicated of the status of the corporation of to-day. It is hardly necessary to develop this idea further, or to go into the details of the present diver sity and practical anarchy that prevails as to corporate relations. The foregoing statements of general principles are sufficient to indicate the peculiar foundation upon which our in dustrial system largely rests." CRIMINAL LAW (see Procedure) EVIDENCE (see Witnesses) HISTORY (Colonial Constitutional Law) THE text of "An Early Decision on Inter colonial Rights." in the case of Governor Bass of New Jersey v. The Earl of Bellomont, Gov ernor of New York, hitherto unpublished, is printed in the May Harvard Law Review (V. xviii, p. 483) . with an introduction by Chauncey G. Parker. It was a test case tried in England before Lord Holt, to determine the right of the crown government of New York to legis late for the proprietary government of New Jersey, or rather whether New Jersey had any rightful proprietary government. It is said to be "the first discussion in a court of law of the constitutionality of a colonial statute." INTERNATIONAL LAW (Arbitration)
SIR THOMAS BARCLAY writes in the April Laiv Quarterly Review (V. xxi, p. 109) of "The
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Hague Court and Vital Interests." After an explanation of the gradual growth of the con ception of a practical international tribunal of permanent character and an account of the establishment and functions of the Hague Court, he describes the use that has so far been made of it and the possibilities of use that are expected to arise under the recently concluded treaties of international arbitration. He concludes with the following interesting commentary on the fate of those similar treaties negotiated by the United States and emasculated by our Senate.
"It is obvious that a Treaty of Arbitration to fulfil its purpose of avoiding any break in the amicable relations between states must be at the same time general, obligatory, and automatic. "It must be general because its purpose would be defeated if, when the crisis came, one or the other party were driven to dispute the applicability of the treaty to the matter at issue. "It must be obligatory, because if it is not, a treaty of submission must be negotiated at the worst moment for negotiations, viz^: at a moment when the state of feeling threatens to suspend negotiations altogether. This is why the action of the American Senate, in making it obligatory for the President to submit for senatorial ratification the compromis provided for in the Anglo-French form, a form which has now been universally adopted and which was that adopted by President Roosevelt, has wrecked the proposed arbitration treaties so far as the United States are concerned. For the same reasons it must also be automatic. "In short, the operation of the treaty, if it is to serve the cause of peace in times of great emergency, must be instantaneous. The juris diction which has failed must ipso facto be suc ceeded by the new jurisdiction with its new men and its new methods. "International Law is not backed up with a police force to carry out its fiats. It depends for its observance upon the reasonableness of its rules. Diplomacy, the chief agency by which, in time of peace, International Law is applied, on the other hand, like the procedure of our domestic courts of justice, is largely a congeries of devices which have grown up to provide for requirements shown to exist, owing
