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237 NOTES. 237 Russell, 166 Mass. 14; see 10 Harvard Law Review, 119), the Legisla- ture has tried again. That it should do this so promptly suggests the spirit of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt's contemporary in the New York Legis- lature who "did his best not to allow the Constitution to come between friends " ; but it has this difference, that a real and satisfactory attempt has been made to avoid the faults which vitiated the earlirr law, and the result seems to be a preference which can honorably be advocated and justified. And such is the opinion of the majority of the Supreme Judi- cial Court which the Legislature has obtained on the validity of the new law (44 N. E. Rep. 625). "The (jcneral Court may have been of the opinion,." say the majority of the court, " that a person who had served in the army . . . would be likely to possess courage, constancy, and habits of obedience and fidelity, which are valuable qualifications for any public oflEice or employment." Whether this is in fact the intention, and will in fact be the result of the law, are questions which are not for any court to decide, and questions which the majority rightly do not take up. It would seem that the minority (Allen, Lathrop, and Barker,. JJ.) put it too strongly when they say that the new law (chapter 517 of 1896) "involves a compulsory dis- regard of actual fitness." The distinguishing and saving difference of the new law is that every appointee, be he veteran or no, must pass his examination ; he must exceed that minimum which the Civil Service Rules fix as a sufificient test of knowledge. Then, and then only, the very arguable proposition that his service may help to fit him is to come into play. Whether or no one approves such a law, it would seem to be well within the bounds of any lilDeral interpretation of the Massachusetts Constitution. There is indeed one section of the new law (§ 3) which would make it possible for an appointing officer deliberately to disregard his duty ; but the court having determined that with a proper construc- tion it merely leaves the responsibility with him, without requiring him to consider anything but capacity, the section is as easy to sustain as the rest, whatever loopholes it may have been meant to leave. Certainty as a Formal Requisite of Negotiable Paper. — Two cases recently decided on the same day by the Supreme Court of Michi- gan afford excellent illustrations of the sort of certainty that is to-day regarded as requisite in negotiable paper. In Brooke v. Stncthers, 68 N. W. Rep. 272, a provision in a mortgage, that, if the mortgagor should leave any taxes unpaid for thirty days, such taxes and the principal and interest of the note accompanying the mortgage, should at once become payable, was held to render the note non-negotiable. In Wilson v. Campbell, Ibid. 278, under similar circumstances, the note was held to be negotiable, because, at the time of its execution, there was a statute in existence requiring the mortgagor to pay the taxes, and hence the stipulation in the mortgage added nothing to the amount payable on the note. That a note and a mortgage executed at the same time must be con- strued together, is well settled. Daniel on Negotiable Instruments, § 156. The two cases are distinguishable only on the ground that the element of uncertainty in the amount payable on the note, which existed in the first case, was not present in the second. In uncertainty of the time of payment, the cases are alike. As an original question of princi-