362 McCunn supported the demurrer with leave to amend complaint on payment of costs, and told plaintiff's counsel that nothing but his youth and inexperience prevented a fine for contempt of court. A Detroit correspondent thus comments on lawyers East and West : — The item in the June issue of the " Green Bag "on lawyers East and West is, I think, well calculated to mislead members of the bar in older countries than our own; and assuming that another view might be tolerated, if not believed by all, 1 venture to give it, and for its own value to ask the profession to inquire of their own experience for its accuracy. It is the commonest mistake to misjudge a com munity by one person or the bar by one trial. It is true that the Code States may vary from those using the common law, but it is error to think that the best forms are not followed by the best lawyers West as well as East; and it must be remembered that as far west as St. Paul we find some of our very ablest lawyers. Two names occur to me there that would rank well in any State, — Senator Davis and Judge Koon, — and the list could be greatly extended. If the gentleman had called at Chicago and seen the rapidity with which cases are disposed of, with trials greatly resembling those in New York or Brooklyn, if he had listened a few moments to Jewett, Swett, Dexter, or Senator Doolittle, he would have noticed intellects as keen and minds as alert, practice as close and forms as religiously adhered to as the East would assume or the courts could tolerate. It is a noted fact that two of the greatest legal minds of the last half century — Ryan and Carpen ter — came from the far western Milwaukee, and that Emmons, Matthews, Cooley, and Waite were bred in the West and their works do follow them. The trouble with our friend's view is, that from a glance at one court-room he judges many; from one light he values the painting; but it is only when we set the best against the best that the race is even. As a matter of fact and history, aside from the larger cities, more dignity, more formal papers, more elab orate court-rooms and offices, more pride in prac tice, more genius in trials (because the brightest minds are all ambitious), more aspiration, are to be found in the West than the East has known for five decades. It has been my lot to visit all of the States and compde facts, report and condense trials; and it is surprising how, in recent years, the bar, in book-buying, in reading, in nicely fitted up surroundings, in dignity of the profession, in ambi tion for advancement has grown most marvellously west of New York, while in the East — the same in
law as with farming — the great majority went else where. A few have succeeded East, — Edmunds and Evarts, Butler and Beach, and men of their class have won and worn their honors worthily far from home. The West is the garden of progress, not alone in agriculture but in law, letters, and inventions. As actual experience is the true test of knowledge, so the wisdom of trials is gained in trying cases: and the West of to-day has tenfold more practice on an average than the East, where a quieter-disposed people and better-settled titles will have less need of litigation. Then, too, it must be remembered that the brightest and brainiest young graduates of the East go Westward to settle, while only the richer and more leisurely disposed remain in Eastern ease and contentment In our Western cities are settled such men as Brewer, Brown, Broadhead, McDonald, and Russell, men of rare scholastic attainments and superior wisdom. The roll is too long to call further, and need not be extended. The real live law prac tice in our country is west of Niagara. J. W. Donovan.
LEGAL ANTIQUITIES. In the Middle Ages hospitality was considered as a chief virtue, and its exercise was enforced by many laws. The old laws of the Burgundians inflicted a fine of three shillings upon every one who denied to the wanderer the comforts of a bed and fire; while by laws made in much later and more civilized times, to refuse the shelter of the roof to the stranger was punished with a fine of sixty shillings. The Slavi evinced their sense of the duties of hospitality by enacting that the goods of the inhospitable person should be burned; and to remove from every one the ex cuse of poverty, as justifying a denial of hospi table rights, they authorized the landlord to steal for the support of his guests. The ancient Bava rian law affixed a heavy penalty on the killing of a stranger, quoting the text : " Ye shall not vex a stranger, nor oppress him." Very dissimilar was the policy of the Welsh law, which permitted three classes of men to be slain with impunity, — the madman, the leper, and the stranger.
Laws of England. — The most ancient trea tise on this subject now extant is the " Tractatus de Legibus et Consuretudinibus Regni Anglioe," Ranulph de Glanville, Henry II.
