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which the Hon. Simeon E. Baldwin, of the Con necticut Supreme Court, was a member. In summing up, the report says : " The truth is that modern society, at least in the United States, has largely lost sight of the rights of the State as against the criminal, in humanely en deavoring to vindicate his rights as against the State." And it quotes with approval the state ment of Sir William R. Kennedy, one of the justices of the High Court of Justice of England, in an address delivered in 1899 before the American Bar Association, that " the root idea of State punishment, its governing principle, was neither the reformation of the criminal nor the prevention of crime, but the fitness of suffering to sin — the relation which ought to exist be tween wickedness and crime." The recommen dations of the committee are as follows : — That the law should provide for moderate whipping, administered in private, as a mode of punishment to which juvenile offenders may be sentenced for petty offences, in lieu of imprison ment. That whipping is also an appropriate mode of punishment for the ruffian class. That fines can, in many cases, the better be worked out by outside labor, under suitable supervision, than by labor in jail. That the efficiency of our police and justice courts could be increased by the employment of probation officers from whom the court might ask information, and who would keep watch of any who might be released under a provisional suspension of sentence. That habitual and incorrigible wrong-doers, even in respect to petty offences, become thereby subject to the right of the State to restrain their liberty for the remainder of their lives, and to take such measures as will effectually cut them off from further opportunities of doing mischief to the community, as well as from perpetuating their kind in an unhappy offspring. Some of these methods have been adopted in certain of our States, where their effect can be studied; and drastic as some of these recom mendations may seem, they deserve the careful consideration of our law-makers.

MATTHEW ARNOLD, we believe, was fond of harping on the tendency of the Anglo-Saxon race

to act in important matters before giving the questions in hand the thoughtful consideration necessary to insure right action. The hasty- and ill-considered nature of much of our American legislation is evidenced by the amendment or repeal which follows so quickly after the passage of many of the acts of our State legislatures, and is a striking example of the tendency to which Mr. Arnold referred. Ve had not expected, however, that the Negotiable Instruments Law, recommended in 1896 by the commission for promoting uniformity of legislation in the United States and already enacted in fifteen States, might have to be included in the class of hasty and ill-considered legislation. But in the Decem ber number of the Hazard Law Review, Pro fessor Ames, while recognizing the zeal and the skill of the commissioners by whom this law was framed, and admitting that it contains a number of desirable changes in the law of Bills and Notes, calls in question a considerable number of its provisions, and points out, in more or less detail, the errors and imperfections in the law, which seem to him so numerous and so serious that he is led to say that " notwithstanding its many merits, its adoption by fifteen States must be regarded as a misfortune, and its enactment in additional States, without considerable amend ment, should be an impossibility." The short comings of the law he lays to the lack of ade quate criticism, both public and private, from widely different sources, before the final draft of the proposed law was issued. The recommen dation which he makes is that, if practicable, the commissioners should " reconsider the present Negotiable Instruments Law and submit it, in a revised form, with their approval," and should also " suggest the form of supplementary legis lation requisite to secure the necessary amend ments in the States which have already passed" the law. Such criticism and suggestion from an expert in the law of negotiable instruments merit serious consideration.

THE so-called Philippine and Porto Rican cases (Fourteen Diamond Rings, Pepke claim ant, v. United States, and Goetze т. same, ar gued in December : De Lima т. United States, and other Porto Rican cases, to be argued early in January) recall the times of Marshall and