creditors, and should be distributed among his creditors, in accordance with the principles of equity, that is, proportionally equal.

Every commercial nation that has existed in the past, as such, has had a bankrupt law upon its statute books, governing and defining the rights of debtor and creditor distinguished as a commercial class from those of an ordinary debtor and creditor.

Rome, when she became a commercial nation, incorporated in its system of jurisprudence a bankrupt act, the germs of which are found to-day in the jurisprudence of France, Germany, and Continental Europe, and England, upon the basis of whose jurisprudence, our own is built, has had a bankrupt act engrafted upon it, ever since the time of Henry VIII. modified and adapted to the modern needs of the commercial classes of a commercial nation which is the first among the commercial nations of the earth.

That our country is ripe for a bankrupt act, and, indeed, that it needs it urgently, cannot be gainsaid. The complex system of jurisprudence which prevails in the United States, makes the administration of such a law, necessarily, a difficult and complicated matter. That each of the various States has a system of jurisprudence of its own governing the rights between debtor and creditor, and for the distribution of the asset of the insolvent trader or debtor among his creditors, whilst the law governing and creating those relations is the same throughout the territory of the United States, irrespective of State lines and State jurisprudence, makes it especially desirable and needful to make the law distributing the assets in such case, of the same co-equal jurisdiction throughout the United States, and subject to the same jurisprudence.

It is believed that the "Torrey Bankrupt Act," will accomplish this much desired end, if enacted into a law, at the least measurably, leaving it to future Congresses to amend it in whatever particular experience shows it to be deficient or defective. W. D. LUCKENBACH.

The American Law Register for May contains the case which pronounced Bible reading in School, to be unconstitutional.

THE CAUSE OF THE INCREASE OF DIVORCE, by Sidney G. Fisher, Philadelphia.

This pamphlet of twenty pages is devoted to enforcing the remarkable statement that "the arguments which upheld indissoluble marriage are gone." (p. 20). The author seems to have been a careful reader of a recent work designed to show the evils of a celebrate clergy, and thence he has concluded that "it was by the canon law of the Western Church that indissoluble marriage was enforced, and it was the first instance of its enforcement in the history of the world." (p. 5). The writer then proceeds a step further to a more remarkable statement that, "The comparative decency and purity of modern times has been brought about by men who believed in divorce and not in indissoluble marriage." (p. 11). There will be no surprise to know that this pamphlet then proceeds—“The idea which has until recently prevailed all over America and Europe, that even if marriage were not indissoluble, yet it was a relationship of such importance that it was almost a crime to break it even for the best of reasons, was simply the lingering survival of the former extreme principle that marriage was in some way supernatural.” (p. 13). It is to be regretted that some definition of marriage was not inserted, as, if it be none of those things which the Christian Church teaches, what is it? The ancients could not define it, and while one distinguished writer proposed that it should be a state propagating society, the theory immediately and ever since has provoked a jest. Yet this writer tells us that "the statistician must take the place of the priest" (p. 20), and esstablish that "certain causes of divorce are evil in their results" (id.). Suppose they are, shall we not eat and drink, for to-morrow we die? For emotions, not figures, govern the

generality of men.

Perhaps a lawyer can best address a law-loving people like ours, and of all such men Tertullian is the writer to whom we may turn for instruction against the repetition of former experiences such as this pamphlet tends to bring again upon the world. The writings of Tertullian are easily accessible in a translation of no mean merit, and an edition (published in

New York City) of no great cost, so that the would-be leader of thought, even if the original language be too much for his Latinity, may still catch the ideas which sprang up from the mixture of the pure principles of Christianity and the impure public baths of the declining Roman heathendom. Like many another lawyer, Tertullian kept not to the true line, but he left a record of writings strong and unflinching. And perhaps from Tertullian, the reader might be willing to go on to other men who helped make that Christian sentiment which not only recoiled from Tertullian, but even now recoils from this proposed statistician successor to the priesthood.

A TREATISE On Pleading and Practice in Equity in the Courts of the United States; with chapters on Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts, Practice at Common Law, Removal of Causes from State to Federal Courts, and Writs of Error and Appeals, with special Reference to Patent Causes and the Foreclosure of Railway Mortgages, by Roger Foster, of the New York Bar. Boston; The Boston Book Company, 1890.

This book ought to have another title and its preface ought not to claim for it, a guide to the whole field of practice in the Federal Courts, with certain important exceptions. For it is essentially a treatise on the administration of equity in the Courts of the United States, with other brief chapters cognate to the principal subject. The importance of such a work must increase in proportion with the fusion of the State systems of law and equity, even if the inevitable course of events finally reaches the Courts of the United States. And this particular book makes a very good supplement to the larger works like Cooper's Daniel, when the practice of the United States Courts is not and possibly cannot be adequately noted. This is worthy of observation in view of the probable passage of the Torrey Bankrupt Bill, whose ultimate effect will be to largely increase the business of the United States Courts in all branches of jurisdiction. Necessarily, such a work as Mr. Foster has undertaken, is designed to be self-sustaining, must treat of many subjects of jurisdiction without regard to their quality as legal or equitable. Eventually the book must be divided into two, or grow in size, but very many practitioners will find a great advantage in this general view of legal and

equitable jurisdiction under one cover. The book ought to be in the hands of every lawyer who relies upon text books at all, that he may know of the workings of a court so little understood as the local United States Courts, and yet whose practice can be made more remunerative than that in the State Courts. No doubt the long delay in the Supreme Court of the United States seems formidable, but that is likely to be ended by the conversion of the Circuit Courts into intermediate and partially final courts of Appeal. With this difficulty avoided, all removable cases ought to be commenced in the United States Court at once. The publishers of this book should

certainly pray for such things.

Mr. Foster has commendably put at the end of his book, the statutes regulating jurisdiction, the Equity Rules and real forms. These things are usually wanted in a hurry, and their absence tends little towards edification.

AMERICAN NEwspaper DirectORY, containing accurate lists of all the newspapers and periodicals published in the United States, Territories, Dominion of Canada and Newfoundland, together with a description of the towns and cities in which they are published. Twenty-second year. New York, Geo. P. Rowell & Co., 1890.

The preface tells an interesting story of how the information was gathered which here appears as a volume of nearly 1500 pages. And an interesting story it is, especially in view of the fact that The American Law Register, of all the legal journals, alone furnished its exact circulation for the year. The St. Paul reporters furnished theirs for three months only. Next year, The Current Comment will be rated and then there will be a showing for some of the other enterprising publishers to envy. The fact is that the legal profession, unlike the medical, are not reading enough and are not communicating their knowledge to each other with the freedom they should. The CURRENT COMMENT, at least, is ready to receive the queries and replies of the profession.

THE WRITER is a smart Boston monthly which has just inflected a sample copy on all of our office, at a dead loss of postage and our temper, for the number sent is a perfect chestnut, being dated August, 1888.

REPORTS OF CASES adjudged and determined, in the Court of Chancery of the State of New York. Complete Edition, copiously annotated by embodying all equity jurisprudence, with tables of cases reported and cited by Robert Desty. Book VI., containing Edwards' Chancery, Vols, 1-4, and Hoffman's Chancery. Book VII., containing Clarke's Chancery and Sanford's Chancery, Vols. 1-4. The Lawyers' Co-operative Publishing Company, Rochester, New York. 1889.

While the Court, whose decisions are reported in the above mentioned books, has long since passed out of existence, and while the tendency all over the world is to destroy the court of equity as a separate jurisdiction, yet there has perhaps never been a time at which equity reports were more valuable to the lawyer, and even to the mere practitioner, than they are at present. The reason of this is not far to seek. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, within whose borders have originated so many legal reforms for which it has never received due credit, (owing doubtless to the inferiority of its citizens in the art vulgarly known as blowing one's own trumpet,) as far back as the last century began the practice of administering equity under common law forms, so far as they could be made applicable, and of permitting equitable defences to be set up in actions at law, so as to dispose of the entire case at once, instead of compelling the defendant, in order to avail himself of his equity, to resort to Chancery to stay proceedings at law or to enjoin the enforcement of a judgment after it had been obtained. For a long time, Pennsylvania stood practically alone in this method of procedure, in fact it was in some quarters scouted at; but, by degrees, the good sense of this quasi-fusion became apparent, especially to clients smarting under double costs, and so far impressed itself on the professional mind, that we have at this day the spectacle of England following directly in the footsteps of one of her numerous children and, so far as mere form of pleading is concerned, going even farther; and now in England we have by Act of Parliament, the rule established, that equitable defences are admissible in a common law action, and further, that in the administration of justice, whenever there shall be a conflict between what were formerly known in opposition to each other as legal and equitable principles, the former shall give way to the latter. That this was not brought about without some resistance, may be well imagined, and some of us may remember Punch's cartoon,