Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/124

90 Hare, 204; Caldwell v. Caldwell, 7 Bush (Ky.) 5I5. See I, 6 ed., 910. The authorities thus violate the purpose of the Wills Act and Statute of Frauds by opening the door to perjured testimony. In Massachusetts, however, if the existence of a trust appears on the face of the will the terms of the trust must appear thereon. 'Olliffe v. Wells, 130 Mass. 22I; Wilcox v. Attorney-General, 207 Mass. 198, 93 N. E. 599. This condition was not complied with in the principal case, and so the property resulted to the heirs at law and next of kin.

An interesting and suggestive book for a lawyer, because it is the result of long thought and investigation of problems of municipal government. The city is doing so many things now-a-days that it is pretty hard to convince oneself that it should not do everything worth doing. But then, the same thing might be said about the state and the nation; the college and the public- school system; the rich man and the endowed charity. Our appreciation of all that may be done to make life fuller, and happier, and better, has come upon us so suddenly that we have not yet had time to study our means of action, to co-ordinate, to discriminate, to set the bounds of action for the various agencies to which we look for improvement.

As the need is more insistent in our cities, it is natural to look to our city governments for first aid. Is the city ugly? Let the city council, with its high appreciation of esthetics, beautify it. Is the housing inadequate? Let the public treasury build model tenements. Do the grocers overcharge? Let the Committee on Water Supply take over their business. Do we need a big theatre, that won't pay, in the business section? Let the city exercise its power of eminent domain, take a site, and subsidize a picture show; the public needs amusement. Is the Board of Trade slow about getting in factories and big business? Let the Mayor advertise factory sites, bargain for inducements, and open an employment office.

This is human nature. We all like to hand these problems over to the city; and our cities solve them surprisingly well, considering. But as a result difficult legal questions of the power to deal with them set a new generation to revolving problems of strict and of liberal construction, and again the solution becomes a question of temperament with courts and lawyers. The progressives are again liberal and the conservatives, narrow constructionists. And again the progressives are bound to succeed.

Professor McBain is a progressive. His creed appears to be that the burden of proof is upon those who deny a city's legal power to do a useful thing. In these lectures he discusses in successive chapters the new occasions for municipal activity: Home Rule, Smoke and Billboards, City Planning, Municipal Ownership, Regulation of Prices, Public Recreation, Promotion of Commerce and Industry. His knowledge of the problem is adequate, his collection of authorities is full, his arguments are interesting; a student of municipal law finds occasion for gratitude in every page. Though narrow in scope and simple in treatment, the book is a contribution to legal as well as to governmental science.

If Professor McBain's point of view had been that of a lawyer, he might have