Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/504

 478

The Green Bag

and has been taken up and approved by the writers above named and by others equally popular, until now it is solemnly laid down as law, ‘too well settled to be shaken,’ that one man can take the property of his fellow without ever setting up a cause of action against him. If such be the law, what becomes of our boasted ‘due process of law’; what becomes of ‘substantive’ rights,

when they can thus be subverted by a rule of procedure? Can a lawyer be a leading lawyer, or, indeed,

a

lesser one,

and

un

derstand these matters, and remain silent?

There is a way out, and one way only— a knowledge of the fundamental principles of Procedure. ‘The study of Procedure is a study of Government.’ It is susceptible of demonstration that the principles of the law are few; that they can be arranged in order and stated in black and white, in small compass. The law in that sense is a little thing. It is a beautiful harmony of principle, but capable of being distorted into an un sightly wreckage of cases."

Noles of Periodicals "If we only had some one like him In says Sydney Brooks, in McClure’: for July, was the thought behind the attentions that were showered upon Mr. Roosevelt in Europe. "Any nation would be glad to reckon hrrn among its assets if it could." At the bottom of the enthusiasm attending his welcome was “the consciousness that every country in Europe needs a Roosevelt of its own." People in England "feel that they would know what to do with Mr. Roosevelt, and I dare say Mr. Roosevelt feels that he would know what to do with them." "Any mine, no matter how rich, or how large, begins to be exhausted from the time the ﬁrst pick is stuck into the und, and all its proﬁts ought to be ﬁgure on the basis of diminishing deposits," says Emerson Hough in Everfybody's for July. "A mine is the re verse 0 a mortgage or a bond. The security does not remain stable nor increase in value, but, on the contrary, continually decreases in

value. In a mortgage we do not look‘to the interest to pay us back our‘ rincipal; in a mine we must look to divide to y us back our principal and interest also. W en the mine is done, our principal is gone. But hlclaw?rnany mining investors ever thought of t at" "It is Mr. Taft’s misfortune that he comes to the Presidenc at a time when the country is in one of its Radical moods," says Mr. A. Maurice Low, writin of “American Aﬁ‘airs"

in the National em'ew for June. "Mr. Taft is not a Radical. He does not believe

in the puriﬁcation by ﬁre. By tradition and education he is Conservative—the Conserva tism that comes from a knowledge and respect for the law. He has wanted to do every thing within the limitation prescribed by the law, but unfortunately for his reputation and peace of mind that has not met with the approval of the public, which has come to regard the law as of less consequence than an empiric remed, and that is one of the

reasons why the epublican Party is in such bad shape at the present time." The legislative scandal in New York growing out of the Allds-Conger aﬁair fur nishes the subject for a dramatic article in the July Cosmopolitan by Charles Edward Russell, who, after reviewing all the startling

facts of this infamous chapter of legislative corm tion, concludes: “Obviously the source of,al the evil in our legislative bodies is not Bad Men nor any other kind of men, but simply and solely Privilege. Privilege requires more grivilege that it may make more proﬁts. y only one way in this world can it attain its desire, and that is by the corruption of public servants and the 'gzrversion of vernment. Whether that done by distrr uting money in envelopes or by awarding fat attorney fees or b retainers from the railroads or by so-calle opportu nities in stock speculation or by brokers‘ accounts mglsteriously swelled or through mysterious 'ngs of legislation or in some other way-what matters? B whatsoever means employed the result rs the same. Men are corrupted, government is perverted, we are betrayed."