is puzzled to know why the rule of com mon sense does not determine the point. Then this particular disgusted layman was informed by a lawyer, (none of your "mem bers of the Bar" either,) that the Common Law of Louisiana, conceived as it was under the very different conditions of the Napoleonic era, really works better in the interests of justice, expedition and simplicity than the Common Law as we have it. If this statement is correct, I know of no more severe impeachment of the blind idolatry of the Common Law — as for instance, the Massachusetts decision you quote — than that the work of a people so little distin guished in the science of legislation as the French, has proved better than the work of the greatest law-making race the world ever saw. If the work of a people, just emerged from centuries of misgovernment of the worst character, is superior to that of the race that originated self-government and carried it to its present standard, it simply demonstrates that the work was done under the influences of modern life, while that of England was clogged and pinioned by the trammels of by-gone ages of different conditions. But after all, is not the source of this anomalous putting of the less over the greater, of much higher importance than the absurdity itself? Then what is that source? I do not hesitate to say that it is the egoism, the self-complacency, the vanity, of the pro fession that so mis-erects so noble a struc ture as the system of law. Law is a science, but do not lawyers often forget that it is the science of human justice? Is there not far too much of a feeling that it is much like a skillful playing of a poker hand? And do not very, very many lawyers entertain the view (unconsciously perhaps, but still the guiding view) that the preservation of the scientific status of law, keeping it on the plane that the layman cannot get his foot on, is the real use of the law? I can remember several innovations in the law, such as ad mission of evidence of plaintiffand defendant,
and I well remember that too many lawyers mourned, not any weakening of the powers of law to furnish substantial justice, but that the technicalities of the profession, gained in a life-time, were swept away! Is not this hideous, when you come to reflect on its full meaning that facilitation of justice is less im portant than preservation of tricks in shuffl ing the cards that a veteran gambler in legal practice has acquired? A typical instance of the utter rot and nonsense this ultra-pro fessional view brings ^bout, was the Original Package case, arrived at by metaphysical in ductions and refinements of mystic logic, until the plain common-sense of nearly every man told him that the most evident rights of selfgovernment were held as of less account than fancy goods in the legal line. By the way, that decision was clearly outlined forty years since by " Porte Crayon." He was down on Albemarle Sound, and told a native that there were men with mouths eight inches wide. Native declared that was a fish-story; Porte reproved him for his incredulity, and pointed out that deductions from known facts proved this statement. " We know that oysters must be eaten whole, we know that there are oysters eight inches across the minor dimension, therefore there must be mouths eight inches wide to take them in, or the beautiful chain of harmony in the universe is broken." Native wasn't a court, and replied " Mister, you must be from the North." "Why?" "Why, because they are so bookish and larned up there that they will believe anything "; — transpose " be lieve" to "decide." This delicacy of ap prehension led a judge in Pennsylvania to decide that a party in A county, holding license there to sell liquor, was guilty of sell- ing without license if he shipped it C.O.D. to B county! Had he shipped without the C.O.D. provision he would have sold in A county, but the C.O.D. kink put the sale in B county! Now that is just the sort of "law" that the layman has a right to be come " a disgusted " one over. That a man be
