a public blessing if the entire herd of hired puffers could be afflicted with pen-paralysis, although even then they probably would dictate to type-writers, and the last state would be worse than the first.
produce an impression of advocacy, will not effect so lasting an influence as a calm and judicial tone. Suppose Judge Thompson should really be wrong and the judges right? This is not impossible, but Judge Thompson writes as if it were not possible. We love one who has the courage of his honest con Judge Thompson's Book. — Now, having freed victions, in debate or in polemical writing, but when our minds on the subject of puffery, we desire to try he embalms his convictions in print and sheepskin, our own hand at it, not on a retainer, but from a with a reasonable hope of influencing the legal world, sense of duty to our profession. A great legal ship" he should temper the wind to the shorn lamb of the has lately been launched, or at least partly, for it is bench, and as it were, blow through a seive. It is however a great triumph to write six thousand pages so big that it has to be sent off the ways in compart ments. Judge Seymour D. Thompson's work on and commit no more serious fault in them than this, Corporations is half out of its shell — to change the and it will be considered by many a failing that " errs figure — and will be wholly delivered in the autumn. on virtue's side." At all events. Judge Thompson, This is the largest legal treatise ever published in by vast labor, by exceptional ability, and by consid America, or anywhere else, probably, and the most erable self-sacrifice, has (to change the figure again) important since Kent's Commentaries and Story's produced the most stupendous monument of legal Equity Jurisprudence. The subject is the most vital learning and mental vigor that has been reared any one in this time and this country, and it is discussed, where in the world in half a century. He has a right as the result of sixteen years of thought, research, to be proud of it, and he has made the legal world and labor, by one who is a master of the subject, greatly his debtor. and probably the ablest master of it now living, or who has ever lived, in America. We have examined The Income Tax. — The enterprising publishers the first three volumes with considerable care, and put them to a practical test in study and in writing who issued Mr. Carrington's and Mr. Roger Foster's upon some of the minor topics treated, and although " treatises " on the late lamented Income Tax Law,— an English edition of the latter was issued in June, — our expectation was large, it is not :n the least dis appointed. The summary and plan of the work laid should not have been " knocked silly" and have al out in the first volume is in itself a masterpiece of lowed another publisher to put forth a treatise on analysis and arrangement, and it almost follows that " How to get it Refunded." There is nothing like the man who could draw it up can write up to it with presence of mind in emergencies. the same wisdom — ex pede Herculem. It is evident that when these six volumes are completed the last word will have been uttered on Corporations, at least NOTES OF CASES. (as the author would probably say) until the courts are called on to decide more cases, and it would be The Duty of Retreat1ng. — The old common as foolish for a lawyer to try to do without them as it law is generally believed to have held that if a man would be to try to navigate a ship without a compass was murderously assailed he could not stand his through the Archipelago. It is not our office, nor ground and forcibly resist, but must run away if he have we the space, to point out its merits, save in a could, or " retreat to the wall," as the old phrase general way, but it requires small space to allude to was, if he could safely do so. Probably most of its sole demerit, which, after all, is a mere matter of the old cases held this, and probably the doctrine taste. To our taste, then, Judge Thompson exhibits has been pretty generally accepted in this country a too frequent tendency toward polemics and a lack until a recent period. The old text-writers differed, of temperateness in criticism, — a characteristic very however, Hale laying down the duty to retreat. East noticeable also in another celebrated writer, Mr. holding the contrary. This was a singular inconsis Bishop, in whom it shows to a ridiculous extent. tency in the common law, for under that law one Judge Thompson's honest indignation against judicial might not do for himself what he might do for his construction which helps corporations in wrong and wife, his child, or even a stranger, that is, forcibly oppression, as he deems it, leads him sometimes to prevent a felony. The law was inconsistent also in indulge in language more remarkable for robustness its application of the doctrine, making a distinction than politeness. This is not the way in which legal between an assault in one's own house and an assault classics are written. Kent and Story did not thus outside, even on his own land; even holding that a write. The style that would be perfectly suitable in man threatened with highway robbery, with a good the " American Law Review," and is intended to horse under or in front of him, and thus well pro
