war, combined with the discharge of a vast number of the actual combatants after its close, is quite sufficient to account for the rise in the prison population which we have witnessed during the last three years. It is to be anticipated that this increase will be of a temporary character: the forces of civ ilization and humanity will in time re-assert themselves and assume their old sway in the public conscience: but it must be recol lected that a moral setback takes some time and effort to overcome, and until it has been overcome we must be prepared to fac,> the unwelcome fact that there will be no diminu tion in the volume of crime. IN an article in the November American Law Register on "Individualism r. Law," Judge William T. Thomas, of Montgomery, Alabama, after giving many striking statis tics of crime—(•.£., tables showing that in the German Empire there are annually per million population 4.85 homicides, and in the United States 129.5: that homicides per annum number 2.34 f>cr 50,000 population in New England and 14.71 in the Pacific States, and that in the United States the ratio of prisoners to population has in creased from one to 3443 in 1850, to one to 757 in 1890,—sets down the following con clusions: First—Variations in the enforcement of law are not so much due to climate, race, density of population, illiteracy, form of government, length of governmental exper ience, as to a varying leniency in the spirit of its administration. Second—This varying toleration of crime is largely the result of an impatient desire for individual power, born of unlimited op portunities, causing men to disregard their duties to the social compact. Third— Heneath it all is a moral unrest, a process of adjustment in individual con ceptions of, and cravings for, absolute truth, not yet so crystallized in the aggregate of individual souls as to become the fixed ideals of the people. FROM a second article on "The Gage of
Land in Medieval England," by Harold D. Hazeltine, in the November Harvard La/ta'iVîi1, we quote the following extract: The history of gages to secure loans where the debtor remains in possession of the gaged land until default, begins with tl:e coming in of the Jews and of foreign mer chants from Italy and other countries. In the centuries that immediately follow the Xorrnan Conquest it is English policy to foster industry and commerce. Foreigners are induced to visit the realm, and it is sought to make up for deficiencies in Eng lish production by bringing in the goods of other countries. Systems of banking and insurance take root. In the interest of creditors new and more efficient processes of judicial execution are established. Tin Exchequer of the Jes is set up as a branch of the Great Exchequer. A system of regis tering debts owing to Jewish creditors and the gages that secure them is perfected, this system allowing a free buying and selling of Jewish obligations and efficient execution on default. The needs of other creditors arc supplied by giving them, on judgments or enrolled recognizances of debt, new writs of execution in addition to the old common law writs of fieri facias and hrari facias: these new writs enabling the creditor to reach the lands and chattels and body of the debtor. The writ of clcgit is introduced by the Statute of Westminster the Second for creditors generally. Merchant creditors, if they get their debtors to make recogni zance of debt before courts of record or cer tain public officials, may obtain, on the de fault of their debtors, even more effective remedy. Merchant creditors may reach, among other things, not only half the land, as under the Statute of Westminster the Second, but all the land of the debtor. These merchant securities are known as "statutes merchant" and "statutes staple." the former being introduced by the Statute of Acton lïurnel and the Statute of Mer chants in the reign of Edward I., the latter by the Statute of the Staple under Edward III. The advantages of the merchant secu rities are given to all creditors by the Stat ute 23, Henry VIII., introducing the seen
