Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/441

425 RECENT CASES. 425 the bills must generally be passed on very hastily. Finally, defects or errors in indictments are remedied only with great difificulty and delay. In many of these respects a single responsible official would be an improvement. The old reasons no longer deter us from intrusting to an officer of the government the power of putting men on trial for crim- inal offences. What we do have to guard against now is the misuse of such a power by reason of bribery, partisanship, or personal spite. On the one hand, proper prosecutions must not be suppressed ; on the other, improper ones must not be commenced. An ample safeguard against the first evil is furnished in all our States by the retention of the indictment beside the information. In our law any person may set the courts in motion. On the Continent the Public Prosecutor does not, to be sure, possess the power of indicting or putting a suspected person on trial. That is done by a court, consisting generally of three judges. But the Prose- cutor has the sole power, except in a few cases, of starting the prelimi- nary examination. That is not desirable here, and is not hkely to become the law in any of our States. On the other hand, where our district-attorneys are invested with the power of proceeding by information in a large number of criminal cases, the law must guard the public from the institution of proceedings from corrupt or improper motives, as for purposes of extortion, for instance. Here the California statutes seem to have devised a sufficient protection by requiring a preliminary examination and commitment before the filing of an information (Deering's Pen. Code, §§ 809, 888). Apparently the Connecticut statutes provide no similar safeguard. In both States the information is frequently used, and apparently with the decided approval of the legal profession and the public generally. It would seem as if the example set by California were worthy of careful consideration in other States. Our criminal procedure is likely to receive considerable attention before very long. Lynching is not the only protest against its defects. There is a pretty general belief that some radical changes might be made with advantage {cf. the article by Mr. H. W. Chaplin in 7 Harvard Law Review, 189). Possibly our law treats the prisoner with too much consideration. Certainly a criminal cause often proceeds at an aggravatingly slow pace and any reform looking toward the diminution of delays is desirable. RECENT CASES. Bills and Notes — Negligence. — Defendant accepted a ^500 bill on a stamp sufficient for a ;^4,ooo bill, so drawn that it was easily changed to ;^3,500, and after- wards bought by plaintiff in good faith. Held, affirming the decision of Charles, J. (63 L. J. Q. B. 649), that there was no duty of care toward plaintiff and no estoppel to set up the alteration. Scholfield v. Earl of Londesborouoh, 11 The Times Law Rep. 149. Compare Youni^v. Grote, 4 Bing. 253, and see Notes. Carriers — Drover's Pass — Unlawful Ejectment. — Where a railroad con- tracts to transport live stock to a point on a connecting road, with an express limitation of liability to its own line, and at the same time issues a drover's return pass through to the destination of the stock, with no such limitation. Held, the liability of the first railway is not limited to wrongs suffered by the drover as a passenger on its own line, but it is responsible for his unlawful ejectment from the train of the connecting carrier. Gulf, C. «Sr* 6". F. Ry. v. Cole, 28 S. W. Rep. 391. FiSHER, C. J., dissenting. See Notes.