years the writer of these lines sat in a meeting-house at Albany built by early immigrants from Massachu setts and Connecticut, who put the emblems of their respective States on the building in the form of a gilded codfish vane supported by a rod planted in a gilded pumpkin. These things have been sacredly preserved and renovated. Boston is much too care less of her historical landmarks. What has become of the Indian with bow and arrow that pointed out the way of the wind for so many years on the old Province House? The Hancock House was sacrificed. The Old South Church had a narrow escape, and the Old State House is trembling on its foundations. Nothing remains to complete the sacrilege but to take down the grasshopper vane from Faneuil Hall, that insect manufactured by Deacon Drowne, who is im mortalized by Hawthorne in " Drowne's Wooden Image." The aforesaid Indian was also the work of his hands. Will not a second Oliver Wendell Holmes arise to imitate the savior of " Old Ironsides?' He will. Behold him rise : — Ay! tear the battered emblem down! Long has it swung on high, And many a visitor has asked To know the reason why. Beneath it rang the buncombe shout Of patriots making laws, And silently that goodly fish Has urged the State's good cause. Oh! better that its tarnished bulk Should bob upon the wave; Its birth was off the fishy Cape, And that should be its grave. Fix to its side each wobbling fin, Attach each loosened scale, And give it to the fisher's hook, Or fool the greedy whale. The Income Tax Case. — The United States Supreme Court have been polled on the Income Tax law, and the result is a surprise to everybody. It was probably generally supposed that it would be upheld as a whole by a majority of the Court, but the absence of one justice through illness has brought about a singular result in one particular, namely, that the Court stand equally divided on the constitutionality of the law in respect to all incomes except those derived from rents of lands and from state, muni cipal and county bonds. So on that point the law is upheld through affirmance by equal division. (If the decision below had been the other way, the result would have different, of course — which is an amus ing reflection.) As to income from bonds, eight justices declare the law unconstitutional, and as to rents, six agree that it is invalid. The result is un doubtedly a great disappointment to the government,
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for it must cripple the bill at least one-half — a case of statutory hemiplegia. The bill was designed to reach two very tangible classes of property, and was aimed at aristocratic land-owners and " bloated bond holders," and these are just the people who get off, while the people who earn their incomes by the sweat of their brow or brains, — tradesmen, professional persons, and those on moderate salaries, will have to bear the burden. The law is a failure in another respect : it is valid only in respect to incomes about which there may be difficulty in fixing liability. Rents and bonds are easily tangible; other incomes are considerably vague, and much is left to the indi vidual conscience. The worst result is that the matter is not yet decided beyond question, for if the invalid justice should recover, another case would be made and his deciding opinion taken thereon, if the Court should see fit. In that event we should have the singular spectacle of one judge having at his mercy the upholding or the breaking down of the national finances. B1g Books. — The biggest book of the year, and the biggest book ever published (excepting that col lection of the catalogues of Quarritch, the great London bookseller, which is a foot thick) is the General Digest for 1894, published by the Lawyers' Co-operative Publishing Company, of Rochester. This is a volume of some 3200 pages, on thin but very fine paper, in very small but clear type, in double columns. The type is of two sizes, only the more important cases and those of the highest courts being put in the larger. This is called the " General Digest." The St. Paul West Company have also put out one which looks nearly as large, called the "American Digest." We have put the former to a good deal of practical use lately, and have found it very admirable. The book however rouses painful emotions in the lawyer's mind. All this enormous labor is bestowed on a mere synopsis of the judicial decisions of a single year, and which in a few years will have outlived its usefulness, for the law, with the exception of a limited number of new applications of the old principles, can but go on repeating itself, year after year, and the lawyer simply wants the "last case," because if he fails to cite that, it cannot be certain that the law has not changed. So these huge volumes have their day, in which they are indispensable, and then they become ' 1 back num bers." It is saddening to observe how much of these big books is taken up with the mere machinery of the law — with telling how to obtain a record of the judicial expression of the law — mere matters of practice. So under Appeal and Error, Pleading, and Practice, we find 735 pages devoted to this part of the law! We owe gratitude to the patient men
