A DISTINCTION WITH A DIFFERENCE.

It is important to note, that "Progress and Poverty" and "Looking Backward" (works prescribing panaceas for social ills), have attracted world-wide attention, and that there is a clear and sharp distinction between them. The present civilziation of the world is rapidly maturing for a new state of things, in the line of more equal opportunities and fairer privileges for the masses of the people. Even Germany is undergoing the most agonizing throes, incident to the evolutionary birth of a new order of things. The great majority of mankind are agreed that the rights, privileges and opportunities of the toiling millions ought to be more equitably equalized; but unfortunately the majority are not agreed as to how it can be accomplished. Competition in its most comprehensive sense, i. e., the struggle for existence, has no doubt largely contributed to produce the present inequalities, as to rights and opportunities, among mankind. The remedy prescribed in "Looking Backward" to cure the ills of competition and to banish want and "the fear of want," is a scheme of Nationalism that would totally obliterate the idea of competition from the commercial affairs of men. If Mr. Bellamy's remedy would not also necessarily abolish the most divine blessings vouchsafed unto the human race, viz.: human freedom, independence, responsibility, incentive to progress and self-reliance, then it would be not only a most welcome, but the most practical dream that a brilliant enthusiast ever dreamed. In all civilized countries thus far, competition has been the peaceful struggle for existence. In any plan of reform of social conditions it may fairly be considered with the law of gravitation, which causes so much trouble and inconvenience in transportation and in the erection of buildings, etc. Is it not a fair analogy to compare competition in the affairs of men with the laws of gravitation in their operations and effects with mother Earth?

Can either be abolished? It certainly has not yet been demonstrated that competition can be abolished without blotting out civilization; but it has been pointed out many times how the imperfections and the abuses in its application can be immensely reduced, at least as much so, as science and inven

tion have aided the human race in overcoming the inconveniences and obstacles of the law of gravitation. It may safely be said that competition has been a conspicuous factor in producing our civilization, and that "Looking Backward" proposes to abolish this social law of gravitation. The remedy prescribed in " Progress and Poverty " in the place of abolishing competition it is encouraged on a wider and broader plane than it has hitherto enjoyed, and without in any manner interfering with the just rights of private property, the liberty, the responsibility and the self-reliance of the citizen.

The doctrine has been briefly summarized as follows: “Each man is entitled to all that his labor produces. Therefore no tax should be levied on the products of labor. All men are equally entitled to what God has created and to what is gained by the general growth and improvement of the community of which they are a part. Therefore, no one should be permitted to hold natural opportunities without a fair return to all for any special privilege thus accorded to him, and that value which the growth and improvement of the community attaches to land should be taken for the use of the community." The reader will readily perceive a sharp, clear and well-defined distinction, which is overlooked by many, between "Progress and Poverty" and "Looking Backward,,' or for that matter between Henry George's theory on the one side and all other schemes of a socialistic tendency on the other. W. M. RAPSHER.

EDITORIAL TROUBLES have assumed a peculiar phrase in Ohio, where the Toledo Bee, a democratic paper, tells the following: "A singular proceeding is announced in the Crawford county common pleas court. John Hopley, the venerable editor of the Journal, a Republican paper, has been indicted for criminal libel upon information presented by Prosecuting Attorney Cahill. More than a year since Mr. Hopley printed some accusations against Cahill, for which the latter took revenge by personally attacking the editor on the street with a revolver. Hopley was not shot, but was terribly beaten. That affair was brought to the attention of the grand jury, but the official offender was not indicted. Now comes another grand jury with an indictment against the editor. Upon this statement, the thought has occurred whether an officer of the court should not be held to his original choice of remedies?

A CODE OF PRIVATE LAWS.

(From an address by Gen. Thomas Ewing of New York, to the Kansas State Bar Association at Topeka, Kansas, January 7, 1890.)

Another mooted reform to which I ask the favorable consideration of the Bar and the people of Kansas, is the adoption of a civil code; that is, a code in which shall be embodied in plain language and orderly arrangement all those general rules of law which are commonly known in treatises as "the private law."

Since the adoption of the codes of civil and criminal procedure, and of crimes and punishments, we may say as to the States of the Union generally that all their public law is in their statute books. The public law covers all the machinery of government, state and national, and the modes of conducting business in public tribunals or by public officers. All this public law is consistent, accessible; and every citizen is charged with constructive knowledge of it.

But the other large body of the law, the private law, which controls the property, business and relations of men, is scattered, discordant and largely unknown to the people.

Our government is based on the theory that all law, public and private alike, is an expression of the collective will of the people. The private law and public law alike, therefore, should if possible be in the statute books, published and accessible to all.

But we built our government on an inherited civilization, and took with it a jurisprudence, the outgrowth of monarchial and aristocratic institutions. A natural respect for our ancestors, and the pressure of great political problems, led us to transplant this jurisprudence here with almost all its idiosyncracies, resulting from the influence of alien institutions and the conditions and events of centuries gone by; and, until about the middle of this century, we reverently cherished them, good and bad, as though they were all of the very warp and woof of our civilization and our liberties.

But about forty years ago an agitation for judicial reform arose in New York, and under its influence one after another of the most objectionable features of our inherited system of

jurisprudence was changed to meet the free and advancing thought and spirit of our people. The distressingly burdensome double system of courts of law and equity was abolished, and all the courts united into one; the common law system of pleading, with its fifty-nine forms of declaration, and its special pleas, replications, rejoinders, rebutters, surrebutters, general counts and general issues, was swept away, and one plain form of action and defence substituted for the ingenious and subtle devices of centuries. The criminal pleadings and procedures of the common law were supplanted by simpler and plainer procedures, a complete code of all crimes and misdemeanors and their punishments was adopted, abolishing all mere common law offences which lurked in the dust of forgotten precedents to spring out and sting the unwary, and now all this body of public law, instead of being hidden away in black letter statutes and scattered and contradictory decisions, is in plain print and orderly arrangement in the State Statutes, where every lawyer, judge and citizen can see it on a moment's notice.

Although these great and radical changes met with the stern opposition of a large majority of the bench and bar of America, their wisdom has already been fully established by their adoption in three-fourths of the States and Territories of the Union; and finally in Great Britain itself, where, in 1873, Parliament passed an act combining the Queen's Bench, the Exchequer, the Court of Chancery, and the Courts of Admiralty, of Probate, of Divorce, and of Bankruptcy in one tribunal, called the Supreme Court; abolishing all distinctions between law and equity jurisprudence, and establishing but one form of action in the administration of justice between private suitors.

These great reforms, including the codification of all the law which can by any construction be called public law, being on the way to complete adoption in all the States, we are brought face to face with the question whether all the remainder of the law-the private law-that which most nearly affects each citizen, which governs his business and personal relations to his family and his fellow man, should not also be codified.

Where is this private law to be found? Part of it is already

in the Constitution of the United States; part in the Constitutions and Statutes of the States severally. So far, that is publication enough. But, unfortunately, at least three-fourths of it is still buried in ancient English statutes, extending from the Norman Conquest to the reign of James II-in English, Irish and Scotch decisions, old and new,-in decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, the nine Circuit Courts, and the fifty or sixty District Courts-in decisions of forty-two Supreme Courts of the several States, and the thousand Inferior Courts of the States-decisions which are as the sands of the sea for multitude, and are increasing at the rate of thousands of volumes and hundreds of thousands of cases a year; decisions, all of which were never assembled in one library or seen by one man-scattered, inaccessible, unsearchable.

In an address before the State Bar Association of Virginia, delivered last year, entitled "The Provinces of the Written and Unwritten Law," Mr. James C. Carter, one of the most eminent lawyers of New York, presented an elaborate and able argument against codifying the private law. He says that all public law should be written in the statute books, and all private law should be left unwritten, so that, as he says, the judge may apply perfect justice to the circumstances of each case as it arises-because "the fact must always come before the law."

This argument, I think, is purely fanciful. Of any one hundred questions of private law arising in litigations here in Kansas, perhaps twenty have been settled by express provisions of existing statutes. Another twenty, perhaps, involve questions of general private law which have been in effect decided by the Supreme Court of Kansas. Another twenty would, perhaps, be found on examination to be settled by a great preponderance of authority of courts outside of Kansas. The remaining forty, however, would be found to be cases (except a very few presenting new and undecided questions) in which the decisions conflict, and a large weight of reason and authority is found on both sides. In these doubtful cases, who shall weigh the authorities by numbers, when not half of them are to be found in the State library, and not one-fifth of them in all the lawyers' offices of any town in Kansas? Who