Reviews of Books life in the visitation of so severe a punishment upon Falder. The court was without power to quash the proceedings or to direct a ver dict of acquittal, and every possible legal defense was utilized by his counsel. Here, then, Mr. Galsworthy accomplishes his first powerful stroke. He shows the machinery of justice to be too clumsy in its construction, too far short of the perfection of a delicate mechanism, to deal out a just punishment to this offender. It is not the judge who errs but the law that falls short. The playwright has thus put his finger on one of the weakest spots in the present administration of justice, its failure to make the punishment fit the crime when the crime is an extraordinary one and calls for unusual measures. What follows is a pitiless exposure of grave defects of penal administration. The gov ernor of the prison is a humane man, but he is the helpless tool of a barbarous system, and he can do nothing in the way of dealing with individual cases on their merits. Even the prison physician is so much a slave of the system that he fails to see that Falder is experiencing the sufferings of an acutely nerv ous organization and is being destroyed in body and soul despite the fact that his weight and pulse are satisfactory. Here Mr. Gals worthy gets in his second powerful stroke. The awfulness of Falder's punishment, its inhuman brutality, make a most eloquent appeal for more scientific methods of prison
discipline, for the proper classification of
647
decisions of the federal and state courts in the Himnan, United States. of the By Albany Melvin bar.Bender Matthew and Harold Bender& Co., Albany.
Pp. xxxvii+ 865+ 44 (index). ($5 )
HE subject of street railway law has be come an important one, differentiating
itself from the law of public service corpora tions in general. and the merit of this set of reports is generally conceded. The new volume brings the series down to date, and will be found to cover the field of important federal and state decisions with sufiicient comprehensiveness, while the high standard of the copious annotations of earlier volumes seems to be well maintained. No important subjects treated in recent decisions appear to have been overlooked. The law of negli gence, in its countless phases, naturally comes in for the principal share of attention, but the public obligations of street railways and the rights of passengers, the effect of municipal ordinances, and the rights acquired under franchises and leases, receive such space as they deserve. The full reports which make up the bulk of the volume are followed by a section given up to “Cases not reported in full," in which the statement
of each case is extended enough to show the facts in detail and the rulings of law upon those facts. The annotations, in the form of essays on special topics appended to nearly every case reported, show the same care and utility as those of former volumes. The index-digest is a practical feature.
prisoners, and for the special treatment of
first offenders and of offenders of a higher moral type. The evils portrayed may not be found prevailing in such terrible form in our more progressive institutions, but they are assuredly characteristic of a regime that a large part of the world still looks upon as civilized. Mr. Galsworthy‘s tragic play is thus dis tinctly wholesome in its candor and sincerity. Its lesson, to be sure, may be misinterpreted, by some as a needlessly radical attack, by others as a basis for foolish sentimentalizing, but those who study it in a spirit of mndor will find in it an accurate presentation, with out exaggeration on, of glaring evils in criminal administration which cry to heaven for prompt and effective remedies.
STREET RAILWAY REPORTS Street Railway Reports Annotated. Vol. VI; reporting the electric railway and street railway
NOTES The report of the twelfth annual meeting of the Colorado Bar Association, held at Colorado Springs Sept. 3 and 4. 1909, now issued, contains the follow ing papers: President's address, by Wilbur F. Stone; "Lynching," by Charles C. Butler; "The Autonomy of Cities under the Colorado Constitution." by Henry C. Hall; and "Third Degree Outrages," by Harry Eugene Kelly. The address delivered by W. 0. Hart, Esq., of the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws from Louisi ana, before the fifth annual Health Conference of his own state last June, on "Vital Statistics," has been issued in pamphlet form. It contains a strong argument for the adoption of a uniform law on the subject of the registration of births and deaths, and a draft of a model statute is appended. The federal corporation tax law was unfavorably criticized in the address of Hon. Thomas H. Somer ville, president of the Mississippi State Bar Associa— tion, at the last annual meeting, and Hon. Wilson L. Hemingway of Little Rock, Ark, in the annual address, discussed with learning and candor the relation between the powers of the state and. those of the nation to regulate the problems of commerce
