Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/350

Rh invoke! What colors to employ! Who is he that can describe this whimsical, in comprehensible, and interesting being?"

Among the scarcest New York law reports is " Select Cases, adjudged in the courts of the state of New York. Vol. 1, containing the case of John V. N. Yates, and the case of the Journeymen Cordwainers of the City of New York, N. Y. Printed and Published by Isaac Riley, 1811," a small octavo, of 278 pages. The volume was republished in 1883, in a larger page, under the er roneous title of " Yates' Select Cases." It is truly " selected " in the number of its cases. The first is habeas cor pus in a contempt proceeding against a master of the court of chancery, for having instituted and conducted a suit in the name of a solicitor of the court, contrary to the statute, in which Yates and Spencer, J. J., were for discharging the prisoner, and Kent, C. J., and Van Ness and Thompson, J. J., were for remanding him. (This case is also reported in 4 Johnson, 317.) The second was an indictment for conspiracy not to work for any employer who employed any workman who was not a member of the society, or who should refuse to pay the rates of wages adopted by them, and to prevent others from so working. The case was in the general session, in 1809, presided over by De Witt Clinton, mayor, sitting with two aldermen, and the arguments of Sampson and Colden, for the defendant, and Emmet, Riker, and Griffin, for the people, are reported. Seldom has a case been so well reported or displayed such ability on the part of counsel. This is the leading case of conspiracy in this country. The law of conspiracy was then comparatively little de veloped or understood in this country. Only one American case was cited. Samp son's argument, covering some ninety pages, is a model of research and logical acuteness, is ablaze with wit, and gives the most for midable exposure of the crudeness and barbarity of the ancient common law to be found in the books. In attempting a synop sis of this brilliant argument, the difficulty is in determining what to omit rather than what to include. What can be more elegant than his statement that the statutory " def inition of what shall be a conspiracy is a declaration of what shall not be so," as "the line of circumference shows as well what is contained within a circle, as what falls without it?" How true and masterly is his distinction between the foundation of the English laws, and that of our own! " The English code and constitution," he says, "are built upon the inequality of condition in the inhabitants. Here all are in one degree, that of citizens, and all are equal in their rights. There are many laws in England which can only be executed upon those not favoured by fortune with certain privileges; some operating entirely against the poor. There one man is sovereign, and all others his subjects. Here no man is subject, and no man lord or master. Why should we then take lessons of pros perity or felicity of other countries? If they do not take them from us, let us at least remain contented with our own institutions, and wean our affections from such as are of no kin nor profit to us. But how strangely are men the creatures of education and habit! At the same time that we have shaken off the supremacy of the English law, we embibe its errors with our mother's milk." How delightfully he then chaffs Emmet! "And I call upon my adversary, that great legal antiquarian, my learned countryman, who lives amongst the old fathers of the law, who estranges himself from his friends, his wife, and lawfully be gotten children, to haunt with such musty companions. I call upon him who spends his mornings with Sir George Croke, and Sir Harbottle Grimstone, and his evenings with Mirror of Justice, and Javaise of Tilbury, to tell me of any case of this nature prior to those statutes. If he cannot show when it was attempted, then it never was attempted."