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 The Legal

According to statistics compiled by the Chicago Tribune, 8952 homicides were com mitted in the United States in 1908, an in crease of 240 over the record of the previous year. The Vermont Legislature reached final adjournment January 29th, after the longest session in the history of Vremont by nearly three weeks. The total cost of the session was $135,000 as compared with $82,000 for 1906, part of this increase being due to the "raise" voted by the members in their own salaries from $3 to $4 a day. Seven legis lators, however, refused to accept the in crease of salary. According to a statement given out Janu ary 20 by Harry K. Thaw, on whose behalf a writ of habeas corpus had been obtained, the writ was withdrawn because he and his mother did not wish to allow the transfer "to be put practically into Mr. Jerome's hands. I am not seeking to avoid a hearing in New York, and if assured a jury trial there, my counsel would gladly suffer the incon venience of trying my case so far from his home." The Solicitor-General of the United King dom extended the felicitations of the bar at the inaugural dinner of the new City of London Solicitors' Company January 21, and in wishing the new society a successful career, said that there was no body of men, in commerce, literature, philosophy, or any other walk of life, more honorable than the body of men that made up the legal pro fession. January 16 was the one hundredth anni versary of the birth of John H. Clifford, a prominent lawyer, statesman and patriot, who was at one time Governor of Massachu setts. In the famous trial of Professor John W. Webster for the murder of Dr. George Parkman in 1850, he handled the prosecution, being Attorney-General at the time. Mr. Clifford's argument for the government was perhaps the most consummate summing up of cir cumstantial evidence against a prisoner that has ever been presented in any capital case in this country.

World

In a libel suit brought by Governor Comer of Alabama against the Montgomery Adver tiser, the jury last month rendered a verdict of one cent damages. The Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States were entertained by the Presi dent and Mrs. Roosevelt, when the latter gave their last state dinner on the evening of January 28. Justice Day was the only absentee from the ranks of the Justices. Ex-Governor John D. Long of Massachu setts, Secretary of the Navy during the War with Spain, has given up the practice of law and will in future devote his attention to the care of trust funds and estates. Mr. Long has had an active and honorable career of half a century at the bar, during which he has handled some celebrated cases. Calcutta Weekly Notes finds two Indian cases on the subject of alluvial accretions recognized in the treatment of "Evidence of Boundaries," in the third volume of Lord Halsbury's Laws of England, and concludes that "India does contribute to the develop ment of the law of England, and the indebt edness in the matter is not entirely one sided." Edward Henry Strobel, formerly Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard University, who resigned from this position in 1906 to take a post as general adviser to the government at Siam, died at Bangkok, Siam, January 15. Mr. Strobel's studies won him eminence as a scholar, and the news of his death has been received with sorrow in America. It has been discovered that through an oversight the Governor of the state over looked the appointment of Massachusetts Commissioners on Uniform State Laws a year ago, consequently their term expired by limi tation. It is anticipated that the Legislature will do what it can to correct this strange oversight, as the importance of the work of the Commission is not underrated in a state which has taken a prominent part, through the able Commissioners that have represented it in the past, in the work for uniformity.