embody extracts and references to the classic literature on the subject, and particularly to Roman doctrines of agency. In this latter respect Story on Agency is a model. But we cannot say that this work is a model in any other respect. Judge Story's work on Agency was not, at the time of its first publication, equal to his other legal works in merit, considered in its entirety; and although the changes through which the work has gone in subsequent editions have improved it somewhat, it is undoubtedly now very far from being what a work on so important and comprehensive a subject ought to be. Mr. Green, in the present edition, has added references to more than four hundred additional cases, most of which have been reported since the seventh edition was published. This is commendable on the part of the editor, and will be of value to the profession; but we cannot help thinking that if there have been something like four hundred cases decided in the law of agency since the publication of the last edition, the law of agency is quite extensive enough in its application to demand imperatively an entirely new and original work on the subject. In the absence of such a work as the law of agency demands the present edition of Story on Agency must suffice. The editor has done his work well; and we notice an occasional original note of considerable value. The volume is in the publisher's best style. Altogether the present volume is the best work on agency extant; but in saying this we do not relinquish the desire for something still better. CORRESPONDENCE. NEW YORK, August 18, 1874. To the Editor of the Albany Law Journal: DEAR SIR-Please submit the following question to your readers: The amendment to the bankrupt act of June 22, 1874, section 9, declares: "That in cases of compulsory or involuntary bankruptcy, the provisions of said act and any amendment thereof or of any supplement thereto requiring the payment of any proportion of the debts of the bankrupt, or the assent of any portion of his creditors, as a condition of his discharge from his debts, shall not apply, but he may, if otherwise entitled thereto, be discharged by the court in the same manner and with the same effect as if he had paid such per centum of his debts, or as if the required proportion of his creditors had assented thereto." Is this section applicable to a debtor who was declared an involuntary bankrupt in 1872, and can he avail himself of the foregoing provision and apply by petition now and obtain his discharge without paying fifty cents on a dollar or getting the majority of his creditors to release him? To the Editor of the Albany Law Journal: H. The comments in the last No. of your excellent journal (vide "Notes of cases," p. 117) upon the case of The N. Y. Guaranty & Indemnity Co. v. Flynn, lately decided by the Court of Appeals, it seems to me were written under a misapprehension as to the force and effect of that decision. It does not lay down a rule of damages in an action for conversion, but simply the rule by which to determine the equivalent in money to which the successful party in an action to recover possession of personal property is entitled in case a return of the property itself cannot be had. The views of the court as embodied in the opinion in that case (Grover, J.) are in substance these: The plaintiff by choosing this form of action elects to take the property as he finds it when his right thereto is determined, with an allowance for the damages sustained by him by reason of the unlawful detention. In the assessment of such damages he is entitled to have included any impairment of value during the time of such detention, as well as the value of the use of the property during that time. In the absence of proof, the interest on the value of the property is presumed to be a fair compensation for its use. In case a return of the property cannot be had, the equivalent therefor is its value at the time of the trial, when the rights of the parties thereto are determined, all other damages are otherwise provided for. Judge Grover, who wrote the opinion, says: "It (the case before him) is not analogous to the action of trover in which the plaintiff does not seek a recovery of the specific property, but damages for its conversion by the defendant prior to the commencement of the action." The correctness of this statement will be seen at a glance, and the case by no means determines “the vexed question as to what is the true measure cf damages" in actions for conversion. It is perhaps well to add that in the case referred to the value of the property, at the time of the taking, was claimed, and no exception being taken to it on the trial, it was so assessed. S. LEGAL NEWS. The estate of the late Chief Justice will amount, when all debts shall have been paid, to about $105,000. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin adjourned Wednesday for two weeks, when the decision in the railroad injunction case will be given. William Cullen Bryant is now visiting Plymouth for the first time since he was admitted to the bar there in 1815. Dr. Wines, the veteran prison reformer of America, has just returned home from Europe, whither he went in June to attend a meeting of the International Prison Committee, of which he is chairman, at Brussels. number of seven hundred, met in convention on the The tax payers of the Nachitoches parish, La., to the 27th ult., and demanded the resignation of the district and parish judges, tax collector and parish attorney. The two judges had left the parish, and the demand as to them was not complied with. The tax collector and attorney resigned. Hon. Asahel Peck, Judge of the Supreme Court of Vermont, and the Republican nominee for Governor of that State, has just accepted the honor in a very brief letter. He does not think the "circumstances of the occasion require any particular exposition of his views on public questions," and merely observes that the platform of the convention meets his ready assent and hearty approval." The late Massachusetts legislature passed a law for the protection of animals. For over-driving or torturing an animal the limit of penalty is a year's imprisonment or $250 fine; railroads are forbidden to confine animals in cars more than twenty-eight hours at a time, and if at the end of this period their owners do not provide drink and refreshment for them they are subject to a fine of from $100 to $500. The word "animal" is made to include birds and all the brute creation. All communications intended for publication in the LAW JOURNAL should be addressed to the editor, and the name of the writer should be given, though not necessarily for publication. Communications on business matters should be addressed to the publishers. The Albany Law Journal. ALBANY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1874. CONTRACTS OF MARRIED WOMEN. Mr. Proffatt's recent contribution to this journal on the liability of a married woman on contract, gave an interesting account of the fluctuations of the English courts on this subject, and a sweeping glance over the field of adjudication in this country. Two points occur to us for comment, additional to our former article on the same topic. And first, as to the case of Yale v. Dederer. We quite agree with Mr. Proffatt that this decision has not been widely or fully accepted, but we go further than he in anticipating that it will not always be adhered to in our own State. It is hard to discover the good sense of the rule that contemplates the married woman as a reasonable human being in respect to contracts for her own benefit, or the benefit of her estate, and as an idiot or infant in respect to contracts for the benefit of her husband or others. The distinction is said to be drawn for the protection of the wife. We believe it is better for the wife, and more in accordance with the prevalent spirit of reform in this branch of the law to teach the wife to protect herself. There is certainly nothing immoral or impolitic in the idea of the wife lending her substance or credit for the benefit of her friends. If she promises or contracts to do so, we cannot conceive any good reason for requiring her to embrace in the promise or contract a declaration that she means to keep her word; i. e. pay the obligation out of her own means. Nor can we see how the insertion of such a provision tends to protect the wife from imposition. A designing husband can as easily extort an agreement including such a provision, as one without it. It seems to us that the English doctrine is the more consistent with reason and policy—if the married woman contracts, let her be conclusively presumed to intend to fulfill her contract out of her own estate. In the second place, we do not share our correspondent's fears of the "disruption of the unity of the family" by reason of the modern legislation and adjudications. In respect to money matters, that phrase practically means, not the community of husband and wife, but the sovereignty of the husband. It means that if the woman has money, the man is to be privileged to absorb it. It means that if the woman has money, she may make contracts to increase it, or to save her husband expense by defraying the expenses of the family out of it; in short, it means every thing that can tend to the husband's emolument; but it means nothing whatever that may loosen his grasp upon her property. The phrase is one that husbands have invented to scare their wives with, and that some judges have adopted because it sounds well, means nothing, and answers the purpose of a reason. The vice of the married woman's position has formerly been that she had no "separate interests " from the husband. The "sanction of ages" is that of dark ages when the woman was a slave. The higher law of equity has recognized the injustice of the position, and to some extent provided a remedy, and modern legislation has adopted and applied these equitable principles, and widened the sphere of their application. We do not understand that the result has been to disturb the harmony of the family, however much such a result may seem theoretically inevitable. Our experience leads us rather to believe that there is as much harmony in those families where the wife has a separate estate, and keeps it and administers it, as where the wife has once had a separate estate, but has allowed her husband to get it away from her and squander it. In truth, the old idea of the absorption of the wife's existence and will in that of the husband, is fast losing its hold on the reason of mankind. Is it not more reasonable to consider husband and wife as two sensible human beings, joined in common interests, but with independent wills, powers and responsibilities, than as a partnership in which all that one partner has to do, is to be swallowed up and merged in the other? We think if Mr. Proffatt will look around the State of New York, and compare the condition of families with what it was previous to the year 1848, he will find no warrant for his fears. Experience is a great teacher, and we believe the result of the married woman's acts has been not to depress the position of the husband, but to elevate that of the wife, and enhance the usefulness of the married relation. To supplement our article on contracts of married women, 10 A. L. J., p. 49, we call attention to several decisions since promulgated, which fully sustain our propositions there advanced. Kelty v. Long, decided at general term of the first department a few weeks since, was an action against a married woman, to recover the price of household furniture, purchased by her on the credit of her separate estate, and her parol promise to pay for it. Judgment against her was affirmed. The court say: "As the house was acquired by her as a residence for herself and her husband, and was useless for that purpose unfurnished, the debt contracted for the price of the furniture was created for the improvement of the defendant's separate property. It cannot be necessary that the debt should be incurred for some thing afterward becoming a portion of the property itself, to give it that character, but a debt incurred for whatever may be requisite to render the wife's property the subject of profitable use or convenient enjoyment must be sufficient for that purpose. For that gives her the substantial benefit and advantage of the property owned by her, which she would not have without it." In this case the defendant simply told the plaintiff that she had purchased a house, and wanted furniture to furnish it. This was held an effectual charge. Again, Maxon v. Scott, of which we gave a recent abstract, was a decision of our Court of Appeals. It was there held, that where one furnishes board to a husband and wife, under an oral agreement with the latter that she would pay therefor, and that her separate estate should be charged with such payment, this constitutes a valid charge, and the wife's estate is liable therefor. And finally, in the case of Miller v. Hunt, 3 N. Y. S. C. Rep. 762, it was held by the general term of the first department, that where a married woman, knowing that repairs were being made upon a house owned by her, and that her separate estate was benefited thereby, silently acquiesced in the making of the same by her husband as her agent, she was liable for the debts contracted by him in making such repairs. LAW REFORM AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS. Little did we suppose when we penned our recent article on the right of a judge to direct a verdict of guilty, that it would meet with such an ungrateful reception from the strong-minded women of the land. Indeed, we rather looked for an autograph letter of acknowledgment from Miss Anthony, and we even dared to entertain a faint hope that she might accompany it with her carte de visite. Nothing of the sort, however, has thus far arrived, but on the contrary, in the Syracuse Journal of July 30, we find a letter from Matilda Josslyn Gage on the subject, which, after several careful perusals, we cannot pronounce to be complimentary. Mrs. Gage, it will be remembered, was one of the ladies who stumped the county of Ontario just previous to Miss Anthony's trial, for the purpose of so influencing public opinion that a conviction could not be had. We are sorry to be compelled to say that Mrs. Gage is violent, abusive, illogical and unladylike. Instead of thanking us for our article, she takes the course which every lawyer's experience will support us in asserting to be the usual course of feminine clients they expect to occupy the lawyer's whole time and attention - they find fault with every thing he does, and when all is over they don't want to pay him any thing. To begin, Mrs. Gage laughs us to scorn because we did not review the trial until the lapse of thirteen months. She says it has taken all this time for us "to get the first principles of justice and of constitutional law through our head," and calls us various pet names, such as "belated editor," "sapient editor," "wise man," etc., and declares that the "veriest simple woman in the land, all uneducated as women are in the technicalities of the law, had no difficulty of seeing in an hour" what it took us thirteen months to see. The lady should not be so hard on our thickheadedness. Woman's perceptions are much quicker than man's. She can always see what she wants to with amazing quickness, but you can never make her see what she doesn't want to see. Now, the wonder to us is that we did as well as we did, and we could hardly have been expected to do any better, for we had no report of the trial until very shortly before we wrote our article. If Matilda had only come down our way at an earlier day, and delivered a stump speech from Capitol Hill, we should have been sooner and better posted up. But the lady's letter is crescendo from beginning to end. The more she dwells on ourselves the madder she grows. Like Tam O'Shanter's wife, she "nurses her wrath to keep it warm." After having exhausted herself, and annihilated us on the score of our dilatoriness, she proceeds to pummel us because we disapproved of her and Miss Anthony's methods of law reform, and advised them if they did not like our laws, and could not procure their amelioration in the ordinary way, to "emigrate." Unfortunate phrase! It seems to grate on the lady's sensibilities. Imagine Mrs. Caudle's feelings on being recommended by her tyrant husband, in case she did not like the domestic regime, to select another abode, and you will get a good idea of Mrs. Gage's wrath at the suggestion of "emigration." She does not propose to emigrate. She likes this country too well, with all its faults, to think of abandoning it. But how the good woman raves and tears! "Disreputable phrase," "disgraceful to its author," "language of a Nero." We are accused of a desire to suppress free speech, and to "banish" Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage, and it is predicted that if we possessed the power, we should "be a tyrant of the same class as Judge Hunt." To all these charges we put in a general denial. We have no desire to banish the strong-minded ladies. We wouldn't part with them for the world, for there is a bare chance that if they were expatriated the gentler members of their sex might coax the men into letting them vote. We do not believe in letting the women vote, and so long as Matilda and Susan are permitted to "rave, recite and madden round the land," there is little danger of such a result. But the gentle Matilda says we are timid in our criticism," and we "curry to judicial and political power." What would the lady have? Would she have us swear at Judge Hunt and threaten him? This is pure woman, for no woman was ever yet satisfied with having her cause won by her lawyer, without plentiful abuse of the other side. We called Judge Hunt's course a mistake," but it seems this does not satisfy; we should have denounced it as corruption, tyranny, or pig-headed stupidity, and then Matilda J. would have smiled upon us. But the feminine correspondent reserves her gravest charge for her peroration. She misconstrues our innocent joke about the admission by Miss Anthony at the trial, that on the day of election she was a woman," and sends up a perfect shower of rhetorical rockets in our condemnation. She is sensitive at Miss Anthony's being forced to admit her weakness. She is angry at herself for being a woman. We guess there are others who share her regret. But right here is the spring of the discontent of the female reformers. They are ashamed of being women. They are ashamed of women's place and work, and yearn to be other than as God made them. It doubtless seems to Mrs. Gage a mean and trivial occupation to bear, nurse and educate children, and superintend her house, and exercise the sweet ministrations of charity and religion in the community where she lives. She would much rather write pieces for the newspapers, and vote, and go to Congress, and make stump speeches in defense of another woman who has broken the laws, and abuse the lawyers who are striving to work out a reform of the laws in her favor, simply because they don't do it in her way. Now, Mrs. Matilda Josslyn Gage has taken considerable pains to speak her mind about us, and we shall not be mealy-mouthed in speaking ours of her. In our humble opinion Mrs. Matilda Josslyn Gage is a goose. She might exercise a good deal of influence in a quiet way if she would only keep quiet, but when she talks or writes she exhibits the fact if not the result of "the foolishness of preaching." She has no thanks to bestow on the lawyers who during the last quarter of a century, have made her and her sex so independent of and superior to the other sex, in respect to rights of property, in this State and in many other States. She has no appreciation of the supreme position which woman occupies in the modern state and society. She only knows and feels that she can't vote, and is bound that she will, and if she only could, would sacrifice every thing else to that end. Her husband's house might go like a pig-pen, his bread might be sour and his stockings undarned, his children, if permitted to grow up at all, might grow up any how and become any thing the devil should choose, but the ballot would be a solace to the mother for every thing. The world would mechanically go all right if women could only vote. the intellect and conscience. We can assure Mrs. Gage that she damages her cause among men and lawyers by her violence, her robust misrepresentations of the state of the law, and her unwomanly and brazen boldness. If she would succeed she would better employ and rely upon lawyers and statesmen, acquainted with human nature and the transaction of affairs and confide in their judgments and methods. But we should dislike to be her lawyer. CURRENT TOPICS. The Court of Appeals will resume its session on Monday, the 21st instant. Causes reserved for the days during the recess will have to be re-stipulated for some time after that date. The next term of the Commission of Appeals will commence on the 15th of September. The formalities of our English cousins-in-law are some times almost distressing. We find it recorded in the Leeds Mercury, that recently, on the last day of the Manchester Assizes, counsel appeared and pleaded without wig and gown, and in ordinary morning dress. Mr. Justice Archibald expressed surprise at the phenomenon. Mr. Temple, Q. C., who was then pleading, explained that there was a custom on the Northern Circuit that on the last day of assize counsel need not or should not appear in their robes. His own robes had been sent on to Liverpool. He believed that gentlemen who did wear their robes were liable to a fine. The matter had been mentioned to the late Mr. Justice Willes, who highly approved the custom. The judge said he must confirm the custom of the circuit, but that before the custom was explained, although he had heard Mr. Temple's voice, of course he could not tell where it came from. Reading the comments of English editors on the judiciary of America, one might well imagine that judicial dignity and propriety were to be found only on the other side of the Atlantic; but occasionally facts creep into their columns which give the picture quite a different appearance. Here, for instance, is a little scene which we find recorded in the Law Times, the actors in which were Mr. Josiah Smith, Q. C., County Court Judge, and Mr. Garrold, advocate. The action was brought to recover the value of a lamb, it being alleged that the defendant kept a lamb intrusted to him by the plaintiff, and substituted an inferior lamb. A question arising as to the probability of a ewe recognizing its own lamb, the judge in Now we don't believe in this doctrine, but we may be wrong. It may be that Mrs. Gage's theory is right and will prevail. But one thing we are sure of, and that is that she and her sisters are pursuing the wrong course for success. If we did not believe in capital punishment, we should still not hope to abolish|quired whether if a ewe were suffering from excess it by going about and attempting forcibly to rescue the condemned at the foot of the gallows. That perhaps would be Mrs. Gage's way, but it would not be the way to commend the measure to popular acceptance, and it would be apt to get the reformer into trouble. Law reforms are effected only by quiet measures, and by constitutional and legal appeals to of milk it would not be rather glad to have any young lamb to relieve it? Witness replied in the negative, whereupon the judge cited a case (not to be found in the books), of two cats of his own who were sworn foes until they both had kittens, whereupon in the absence of either, the other took kindly to all the kittens. Mr. Garrold apparently feeling pressed by this case in point, abruptly observed: "We are talking of sheep, not cats." Subsequently the judge referred to the two officers of the court as to the habits of ewes, and they (although not sworn) confirmed the witness; and, after hearing the defendant and his witnesses, the judge said he considered the preponderance of evidence to be in favor of the plaintiff, and ordered the lamb in dispute to be given up. Thereupon Mr. Garrold threw the fee which the plaintiff had given him upon the table, saying that he declined to take a poor man's money with such ruling from the bench. The judge very meekly expressed the hope that Mr. Garrold would apologize, to which Mr. Garrold replied "oh, no, he won't." A Washington special to the Times says that it is believed at the Department of Justice that the failure of Congress to provide some means for the immediate publication and sale of the Revised Statutes may lead to serious inconvenience to the legal profession throughout the country, if not to extensive litigation. These statutes have now been the law of the land since a few days before the adjournment of Congress, yet there are only fifty copies of them in existence, as the number of preliminary copies that were printed was limited to fifty. Even these fifty copies do not appear to have been distributed with the greatest discretion. The Attorney-General of the United States, who is constantly called upon for an official construction of these laws, was not provided with a copy, and has been compelled to borrow the official copy of the State Department for his personal use. The judges of the United States courts throughout the country are daily making application for these laws, as they are now about to be called upon to construe them at the Fall terms of the courts, but there are none to give them, and there will not be until after the completion of the index, which cannot be finished before December. It is also believed that what is called the saving clause in the revision may lead to serious legal complications. This clause pro vides that all laws contained in this revision are repealed wherever they appear on the statutes in a different form, but that laws not contained in the revision, and which exist elsewhere in different forms, are still in full force. Lawyers who have carefully examined the revision fear that this "saving clause" will, in a great number of cases, compel a search through both the seventeen volumes of the old statutes, and the revised code, before it can be safely determined whether or not any given law is in force. A convention of the law book publishers of this country is to be held at New London on Wednesday next, its principal object being an adjustment of prices. Precisely what action in this respect is contemplated, we do not know, but we take it to be this: The publisher of a law book sells it to the "trade" at a certain discount, usually stipulating that it shall not be sold by the dealer to the profession at less than the established cash price. But, notwithstanding, dealers frequently "cut under " in order to secure a larger sale, or another dealer's customersthat is to say, they sell it at less than the stipulated cash price. To secure some concerted action which shall do away with this, is, we believe, one of the purposes of the convention. We hope, though we do not know, that another purpose is to secure a closer approximation of the catalogue price to the cash price. It seems, at first blush, absurd that a publisher should advertise a book at seven dollars and a half when he does not expect to obtain for it, and does not charge for it over his counter more than five dollars, yet such is the custom of the law book trade. The reason given is that the catalogue price is established for purposes of exchange among dealers. It would not seem to be a very difficult matter-now that the publishers and dealers are to come together to bring about an arrangement, whereby law books should be catalogued at their real price. Such an arrangement would be advantageous to the publishers, and also, we apprehend, to the profession. The convention will be attended, we believe, by representatives of all the law book publishers and dealers in the country, except the firm of Bancroft & Co., of San Francisco, who will adopt and act upon any determination arrived at. NOTES OF CASES. A point was raised in Petrie v. Howe, 4 N. Y. Sup. 85, which reminds one of the celebrated case of The Alms House v. Whistlo. The action was crim. con. The plaintiff, after testifying that his wife was the mother of four children by him, and that after the alleged criminal intercourse she gave birth to a fifth, was asked what was the color of the hair of the first four children. The fifth child was present in court. It was held that this species of physiological evidence was not admissible, and because it had been received, a new trial was granted. A question of some interest was passed upon in Hodge v. Sexton, 4 N. Y. Sup. 54. The plaintiff staked his watch and chain on a throw of the dice, and lost, by reason of a trick or cheat on the part of his adversary. The stake-holder delivered the property to the winner, who sold it to defendant for value, and without notice. In an action of replevin, held, that no title passed to the winner which he could convey to the purchaser, and that plaintiff could not recover. The case is analogous to Defrese v. State, 3 Heisk. 53; 8 Am. Rep. 1; which was an indictment for larceny. It appeared that the prisoner and S. met the prosecutor; S. dropped a piece of paper; prisoner picked it up while S. had stepped aside, and took from it a five cent coin. S., on returning, received the paper from the prisoner, saying that "he would not take ten dol |