110
The Green Bag
[Ernest T. Florance, Esq.-——Continued.]
add fifty paragraphs without repeating prin ciples, or entering into unnecessary details. The law of Suretyship is fairly well covered in thirty-five Articles; that of Partnership in ninety Articles. . . . With the exception of certain Common Law matters, which naturally would not arise in a
Civil Law State in the same form in which they would arise in a Common Law State,and which are really more in the line of adjective than substantive law, nearly all the general questions governing Civil Conduct have been presented in the onehundred years of Louisiana’: existence, to our Court. . . .
The work as outlined by you is a necessity in the fullest sense of the word, and when completed its possession will become a necessity to every member of the Bar in general practice. Your method of raising the necessary funds is the best that could be suggested, and I agree with our brethren that there must be one or more of the public-spirited ultra rich who are willing to have their names go down to posterity as having rendered the greatest benefit to their fellow citizens that the use of money could confer. No library, no art museum, no charitable institution, and no educational institution can compare in value to the people at large with the composition of a work that would bring about certainty and rapidity in the administration of the law, which enters as a determining factor into nearly every event of daily life. General James A. Beaver, former Governor of Pennsylvania and now judge of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania:— The conception is fine. If in its evolution the practical development could reach your ideal, and the product be equal to the seed thought, the benefits to the profession and to the country at large would be inestimable. If you could secure a man or a body of men who could do for America what Blackstone did for Englandand you could makeyourCorpus/uris of equal authority with his Commentaries, it would immortalize anyone connected with
the enterprise, intellectually, commercially or otherwise. Oh, for a James Wilson, whose tragic and untimely death prevented at least the initial work which would have furnished a foundation for what you propose. With his Scotch ken, keen analysis and comprehensive grasp, he seems to those of us who hold him in
grateful and honored memory to have been the one man of the generations past in this country who was equal to the demands of this enterprise. The task is Herculean, viewed from any of its varied aspects. I wish you well, I am sure,in the effort to carry the project to a successful conclusion. The difficulties seem to me to be almost insurmountable.
All the greater credit, there
fore, to the man or men who will overcome them. When the great topics of the law, such as Carriers, Corporations, Evidence, Negli gence, Railroads, etc., reach in their treatment from four to eight huge volumes, one smiles at the proposition to reduce to a harmonious whole the great Corpus juris into twenty volumes, and yet it is not difficult to see that these great dissertations on single subjects, to a very large extent, cover the same ground and can be reduced in their final analysis by a comprehensive and philosophical treatment which will cover but little more than the full discussion of any one of them. I believe the thing can be done and, in the face of the great need of its being done, you may be sure that I wish you and your confreres abundant success in the doing of it. Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, Governor of Pennsylvania 1903-1907; former President judge of the Court of Common Pleas, Phila delphia, and the President of the
Historical
Society of Pennsylvania:— The vast benefit such a work, if it can be successfully accomplished, will confer upon the judiciary, the profession and the public is beyond estimation. The difficulties to be overcome before such a consummation can be reached are likewise very great, and its value will depend upon the energy, accuracy and care of those con cerned in its preparation. Great tasks are however, sometimes accomplished,
and
the
plan you suggest appears to be feasible. Hon. G. A. Endllch, President of the Penn sylvania Bar Association for 1909-10:— I have given your Memorandum on the subject of an American Corpus juris very careful examination. In common with, I think, the larger part of the profession I have long felt that such a work, properly done, would be of infinite service. Indeed, I am disposed to look upon it not only as one of the great desiderata from the standpoint of the judge and lawyer, but in a still broader
