Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/100

 Rditorial Department. that Congress cannot delegate legislative power, apparently the first specific expression by the Supreme Court of a maxim uniformly held by the State courts. ом the cases on the question of "Pen sioning School Teachers" several rules are deducible, says the Central Laiv Journal: First: Public officers as a class may be pensioned, if the good of the public service demands it. We, however, doubt the cor rectness of the construction that is put by the Supreme Court of New York on the act of that State, that one member of a certain class can be pensioned while others in the same class or who subsequently come into that class are not entitled to the same priv ilege. If public moneys are to be used at all for such purposes, they should be expended without favoritism, or the reason that sus tains the whole scheme will fail, ¿. <?., that it be for the public good. It certainly would not benefit the school system, for instance, for the teachers to understand that certain ones, at the pleasure of -the school board or any other determinate body, would receive a pension on completing a certain term of serv ice, while others who were equally worthy and who had met all the conditions would be denied. Taxation to promote such a scheme would be clearly unconstitutional, as serving no public purpose. Second: The fund out of which such pensions are to be paid must be raised by general and uniform methods of taxation; the State has no right to tax the teachers direct for such a purpose, neither has a board of education or school commit tee a right to insert in the teacher's contract of employment, an agreement to remit a cer tain proportion of his salary to create such a fund. The State has no right to compel par ties to protect themselves against untoward conditions later in life; if it seems for the good of the public service that certain classes of public servants should be thus pro tested, it is the duty of the State to supply the means, and, if necessary, to raise the money with which to create a special fund for that purpose, by the ordinary methods of taxa tion.

59

THE Editorial Notes of the American Law Review are always breezy,—even when deal ing with so important a question as the Alas kan Boundary Decision, in the December number. After quoting the provision of the treaty that: "Wherever the crest of the mountains which extend in a direction parallel to the coast from the fifty-sixth degree of latitude north to the point of intersection of the one hundred and forty-first degree of west longi tude shall prove to be at a distance of more than ten marine leagues from the ocean, the limit between the British possessions and the strip (lisière) of coast which is to belong to Russia, as above mentioned, shall be formed by a line parallel to the windings (sinuosités) of the coast, which shall never exceed the distance of ten marine leagues therefrom" —the note proceeds as follows: Unfortunately for this description, the chain of mountains described in the reports of early navigators, which was assumed to exist in this treaty, and which was assumed to exist by early cartographers who had drawn their maps accordingly, does not exist at all except toward the St. Elias Alps, far to the north. This was one of the circumstances which furnished the Canadians with an ex cuse for their contention and for their ex traordinary claim that the word "côte" (coast) employed in the treaty meant a line drawn along the western shores of the external fringe of islands which borders the territory in question. The other and efficient cause of this extraordinary contention was the dis covery of gold in the Klondike region, mak ing it strongly desirable, from the Canadian point of view, that the Canadians should have access to the sea through what is known as the Lynn Canal. Until the Canadians began to put forward this extraordinary claim, the territory in dispute had been put down as Russian territory, and, subsequently to the Seward Purchase of 1867, as American terri tory, on all the maps in use in the United States, in England, and in Canada. In fact, those maps showed a greater quantity of American territory than has now been