to its jurisdiction in the suit in bankruptcy, and who therefore cannot be affected by any judgment or decree that may be made in that cause. Appeals and writs of error to this court in such suits are allowed, and these are the appeals and writs of error referred to in section 4989. The question, then, to be determined in this case is, whether proceedings by creditors to prove their demands against the estate of a bankrupt are part of the suit in bankruptcy, or separate and independent suits at law or in equity. The court hold that they are part of the suit in bankruptcy, and that the decision of the Circuit Court thereupon is final and not reviewable in the Supreme Court.

This is in accordance with the views expressed by Mr. Justice Clifford when he delivered the opinion of the court in Morgan v. Thornhill, 11 Wall. 65. As, however, the question was not then directly presented for adjudication, the same learned justice subsequently saw fit, in Coit v. Robinson, 19 Wall. 284, to leave it open for further consideration. Now, however, when the question is fairly presented, and after it has been fully argued, the court hold that what was thus said in Morgan v. Thornhill was correct, and that it has no jurisdiction upon error in this class of cases.

BOOK NOTICES.

Practical Life Tables, by Alexander McKean, deduced from the Northampton, Carlisle and recent Government Observations, containing upward of fifteen thousand distinct quantities, and affording, without the necessity of reference to any other tables, correct data for the ready solution of all cases occurring in the actual transaction of business in Life Assurance and Annuities, comprehending assurances on single and joint lives, annuities immediate and deferred, endowments, reversions, absolute and contingent, and generally, every other contingency dependent on the probable duration of human life; and particularly showing in an original and condensed form, admitting of the easiest inspection and reference, the values of £1 annuity on two joint lives at all combinations of ages, from 14 to 72, both inclusive, deduced from the Northampton and Carlisle Tables of probabilities, and assuming the improvement of money at three, four, five and six per cent per annum.

Exposition of the Practical Life Tables, with digest of the most approved Rules and Formulæ (illustrated by numerous examples), for the solution of all cases occurring in the actual daily business of Life Assurance, Annuities, Reversions, etc. To which are added general remarks on the constitution of various life offices, and particularly as to the different modes of allocating their profits, together with Tables of the Values of Policies, according to the Northampton law of mortality, and the improvement of money at four per cent, as also Tables showing the Values of Reversions, both in money and stock, according to the Carlisle Table of Mortality, adapted to various rates of interest and various prices of stock, more full and complete than any heretofore published. By Alexander McKean, Actuary, Bridge street, Blackfriars, London. London: Published for the author. American Edition: PubKished by John D. Parsons, Jr., 1876.

BOOKS

prepared for the use of lawyers are not, as a rule, entertaining to the general reader. Yet some treatises upon legal subjects are, to one with a cultivated mind, really pleasant reading. There are other works which at first seem dry and difficult, but upon close acquaintance become almost fascinating. There are still other volumes that are readable, but which under no circumstances can afford pleasure, although they may instruction to the reader, and these are perused as a matter of duty or necessity. There is yet another class of books to which the volumes before us belong that are not readable at all, and whose only merit is that they are exceedingly useful.

The work under consideration treats, so to speak, of the problem of life. Not that problem as it appears

to the sociologist or the theologian, but as it enters into business calculations, and affects the rights of property. The field embraced is narrow, perhaps, but there is this advantage, that the fundamental truths are known and certain, and do not change, neither do men's minds change or vary concerning them. The formulæ and tables here contained will be as useful a hundred years hence as they are to-day, and we doubt not, many of the copies of this edition will then be in use, just as almost all of the copies of the edition issued forty years ago are in active use to-day.

This work, which has received the approval of the highest court of the State (Jackson v. Edwards, 7 Paige, 386, at page 408), consists of, first, a large chart covered with figures, so arranged that, with the given data, any case arising in the daily business of life assurance, annuities, pensions and such matters as depend upon the continuance of a human life, may be solved with as great facility as the interest on a given sum of money for a specified time can be determined from a book of interest tables. That the calculations in this chart are accurate has been demonstrated by forty years' use in England and this country. The second part of the work consists of an explanation of the use of the chart, and various formulæ covering every conceivable case which can arise. The chart in its estimates is based upon both the Carlisle and the Northampton tables of mortality, one or the other of which is adopted in all calculations of this nature; the Northampton tables being adopted by the Supreme Court of this State. The pound sterling is used in the formulas, but as the fractions are expressed in decimals, this fact is of little moment.

It may be asked to whom such a work will be of use. To those having to do with life insurance of course, but will it be to the lawyer? To the life insurance actuary, and, indeed, to every one who is permanently engaged in that business, it is as much a necessity as is a work on practice to the attorney, or an interest table to the banker. Insurance business may be done without such a work, indeed, and we have known an attorney who did not consult books in practice, and a banker who computed his own interest, but both banker and attorney made egregious blunders, one to his own, and the other to his client's loss. But insurance men know too well the value of this treatise to dispense with its use. To the bar it is not so well known, and we have been cognizant of several instances in legal practice, when the use of it would have saved a vast amount of labor. In the apportionment of moneys arising on partition sale, in the adjustment of trust funds in the settlement of the estates, and upon other occasions, such a work is liable to be needed, and a lawyer in active practice is liable to frequently want its assistance. To those dealing in real property, it must frequently prove of great benefit, as by it the present value of every kind of contingent interest, depending on lives, may be readily ascertained. It is difficult to name all the instances in which it may be of use, but to persons in the kinds of business uamed, or to those of them who are to any extent employed, it issure to prove useful. Both the chart and the explanatory volume are fac simile reprints from the English edition, and are clearly printed and elegantly bound, and the chart is mounted on strong linen cloth, and so arranged as to fold compactly without injury to the print, and to endure the wear to which it must be necessarily subjected when in actual use.

The Solicitors' Journal, in speaking of the disposition of courts to hold that the question of negligence is one of law, says it is absurd that such questions should be allowed to be spoken of as questions of law, or that they should ever find their way into the reports. The whole difficulty arose from the strong tendency of juries to find iniquitous verdicts against companies, which produced an almost equally strong tendency on the part of judges to interfere with questions of fact in order to keep some sort of control over the partiality of jurymen. This was always done on the pretext that the question involved was, whether there was any evidence to go to the jury. The line that these cases have taken in this respect illustrates the constant tendency there is in all legal systems toward fictions in order to mask deviations from general principles which it is thought dangerous openly to interfere with, but the application of which to a particular class of cases is inexpedient.

The Court of Queen's Bench in Ontario, Canada, in the recent case of Leprohon v. City of Ottawa, decided that the local legislatures of the Dominion have not power to impose a tax upon the salaries of officers of the House of Commons. In the case of Booth v. Meyer, recently decided by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, after the filing of a petition by a member of a partnership, praying that himself and his partners might be declared bankrupts, but before an adjudication, another of the partners brought a suit on an individual claim. The defendant in this latter suit filed an affidavit of defense setting forth the commencement of the bankruptcy proceedings. The court held that the pendency of these proceedings was no valid defense, either in bar or in suspension of the action, and that the affidavit was therefore insufficient.

-The Supreme Court of Georgia, in the case of Williams v. Grover, just decided, held that when a defendant has sold all his property, a plaintiff in execution may levy on any of such property, subject to the lien of his judgment, at his option, without regard to the order in which the defendant sold the different portions.

The Lieutenant-Governor of Guernsey has just exercised the prerogative vested in him by the Crown, of deporting a foreign resident from that island and the islets which constitute the bailiwick of Guernsey. The individual in question is a Frenchman named De Fabey, who claims the title of colonel, aud who has within the last few years established himself as conductor and printer of a weekly newspaper entitled Gazette des Isles de la Manche. A few months ago, on the death of Mr. Clucas, presiding judge of the Court of Alderney, which is in the bailiwick of Guernsey, that paper, in what purported to be a biographical notice of Mr. Clucas, made an attack on his personal and judicial character. Not content with this, the writer expressed a hope that he might be permitted to write a memoir of the widow of the deceased judge, premising that he would say any thing but soft things of her when she died. For this a criminal information was filed against De Fabey as printer and publisher, and the result was that the Royal Court of Guernsey sentenced him to pay a fine of £200 to the Crown, and awarded damages to the same amount to Mrs. Clucas, with costs. Failing means to pay either sum, the defendant was committed to prison, where he still remains. During the time of his incarceration his paper

contained an article reflecting on the moral conduct of the first law officer of the Crown in Guernsey (the Queen's procureur); and we now find that the lieutenant-governor has intimated to the prisoner that he will be released from custody on January 15, 1877; but that upon his liberation he must forthwith remove himself beyond the limits of the bailiwick. In the meantime Mrs. Clucas has arrested De Fabey's printing plant and other chattels for the recovery of the damages awarded to her, and the arrest has been confirmed by the Guernsey Court. It was a similar case of exercise of prerogative some years ago on the part of Sir William F. P. Napier, when Lieutenant-Governor of Guernsey, which led to a conflict of authority between the civil and military executive, when Her Majesty in council ruled that the latter had power to expel foreigners from the land without any intervening process in the civil or military courts.- The legislature of Western Australia has just passed a bill to legalize marriage with a deceased wife's sister. When this bill and that from Queensland have received the royal sanction such marriages will be legal throughout the Australian continent. The lower house of the New Zealand legislature have five times passed a similar bill.

A meeting of the Executive Committee of the New York State Bar Association was held in Albany on the 13th inst., Judge John K. Porter presiding. There were present, from New York, Colonel Elliott F. Shepard and Albert Matthews; from Albany, Marcus T. Hun; from Troy, Esek Cowen; from Saratoga, John R. Putnam. Telegrams of apology were read from other members, who were snowed up in the cars on the western trains. The committee appointed as a sub-committee on admissions in the First Department, Charles A. Peabody, Henry D. Sedgwick, William Allen Butler and Louis L. Delafield. The President designated the following members of the various standing committees to call their respective committees together: On Admission - Peter S. Danforth, of the Third Judicial District of the State. On Grievances - Hamilton Fish, Jr., Second District. On Law Reform Hon. Matthew Hale, Third District. On Prizes E. F. Shepard, First District. On Legal Biography - Hamilton Odell, First District. A discussion of considerable length followed on amending the by-laws, and it was finally settled to reduce the number requisite to form a quorum of the Committee on Admissions from seventeen to five. A by-law was also adopted authorizing all the standing committees to do their business by correspondence. The Association has now 365 members, with 200 names proposed for membership.

The case of Bennet v. Ellison, decided on the 15th ult. by the Supreme Court of Minnesota, decides a question of importance to debtors. The court held that an assignment by a debtor of his property, purporting to be for the benefit of his creditors, and fair on its face, if in fact executed by the assignor with the intent and for the purpose of thereby effecting a compromise with his creditors, is void even though the assignee have no notice of such intent. The same court also decide in Bemis v. Commissioners of Rice Co., that a sheriff has no power to bind his county by the offer of a reward for the re-capture of a person charged with crime who has escaped from the county jail. - In the case of Hershfield v. Lind. Bright. & So.

Coast Ry., just decided by the Queen's Bench division of the English High Court of Justice (25 L. T. Rep. N. S. 473), which was an action for injuries arising from a railway accident, it was pleaded that the plaintiff had, upon payment of a certain sum, released the defendants from all further claim. Plaintiff replied that such release had been obtained by fraudulent misrepresentation of facts, and of the legal effects of the deed of release. The court held, upon demurrer, that the fraudulent misrepresentation alleged invalidated the deed.

In Cody v. Central Pacific Railroad Co., just decided by the United States Circuit Court for the District of Nevada, one Meur purchased a through emigrant ticket from Baltimore to San Francisco, at reduced rates, over the Union and Central Pacific railroads as a part of the route. Upon the ticket was a contract, containing certain limitations, one of which was that it was not transferable. This contract was signed by Meur. At Omaha the contract was taken up, and an exchange check issued to Meur, which purported upon its face to call for "one continuous emigrant passage from Omaha to San Francisco. Meur traveled on the check to Palisade, in the State of Nevada, and sold it to plaintiff, who attempted to ride on the ticket upon the same train, but was ejected. The court held that he was not entitled to ride on that check, and say that a contract for "one continuous emigrant passage from Omaha to San Francisco," is not a contract to carry one person from Omaha to an intermediate station, and a second to another station, and so on, but only a contract to carry the same person through the entire .route. - What's in a name? In a suit recently tried before vice-chancellor Bacon, the plaintiff's name was Bottle, one of the defendant's was Knocker, and that of another defendant Keys.

The Supreme Court of this State at the General Term of the Fourth Department, in the case of Presbyterian Society of Knoxboro v. Beach, recently decided, held that where divers persons of different denominations signed a subscription paper "for the purpose of building a Presbyterian Church edifice," the subscriptions being payable to a treasurer to be appointed by the subscribers, and the paper contained no mention of any attempt to, or intention of, forming any religious society or corporation, and a church edifice was afterward constructed and the plaintiff was created a religious corporation under the statute, the right to recover the subscriptions did not vest in the plaintiff, and no action could be maintained by it to recover of the defendant, one of the subscribers, but who had not participated in the formation of the corporation, the amount of his subscription.

The Supreme Court of Georgia in the late case of Larey v. Talliaferro, held that when one, in trading property, says he will warrant it to be sound in every respect, his declaration may amount to a representation as well as to a warranty, and that an express warranty, knowingly false, may be waived as a contract, and an action be brought for the deceit. 6 Ga. 584. It further held that one who knowingly trades property afflicted with a contagious disease, is not entitled to any notice, when the existence of the disease is afterward discovered by the purchaser. What is already known need not be communicated.

OF

PUBLISHERS' DEPARTMENT.

the LAW JOURNAL in the past it is not necessary to speak. Its fourteen volumes speak for themselves. Of the LAW JOURNAL for 1877 its Conductors wish to say this: That it will be a better law paper than it has ever been before. Special efforts will be made in each of its departments, to make it more entirely answer the needs and expectations of the practitioner, the legal scholar, and the scientific jurist. More especially will attention be given to the collection of all important decisions from all parts of the country, and a careful and accurate presentation of them, either in full, or in such condensed form that their value will not be impaired. The LAW JOURNAL is not a Report, and consequently we have never attempted to fill its pages with cases in extenso. It has been our practice, however, to report in full, cases of unusual interest. The others we have given in abstract, thereby being enabled to give a much greater number and variety of principles and cases. While we shall hereafter follow this same general plan, we shall extend the space devoted to important cases, and make a more extended and thorough collection of them. To enable us to do this, and not diminish the amount and variety of miscellaneous matter and abstracts, we shall in the future, as we have frequently done in the past, increase the size of the LAW JOURNAL from four to eight pages, as the matter may require.

All decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States are sent to the LAW JOURNAL as soon as announced, and are reported by us - the more important ones in full, and the others in a condensed form. We shall hereafter give promptly an abstract of all decisions of the Court of Appeals, and shall report the more interesting cases in full. We shall, besides this, give a weekly digest of the decisions of general interest of the courts of all the States, and full reports of the leading cases. The Digest of English cases will be carefully attended to, and all cases of interest in this country will be noticed.

The Publishers of the LAW JOURNAL are assured that they have always given to their subscribers the worth of their money. Indeed, measured by the character and extent of the work and the price of like journals, they have given them more than their money's worth. The annual subscription price to the English Law Times is $9; to the English Law Journal and notes, which correspond to our abstract, $15; to the Solicitors' Journal over $7; to the Irish Law Times $9; and none of, these give more or a better quality of reading matter than the LAW JOURNAL gives for $5; and in this country the two or three weekly Notes of Cases, Digests, etc., charge $10 a year or $5 a volume, although the LAW JOURNAL gives in notes or in full, more cases every week, besides its miscellaneous matter.

But in view of the fact that these are "hard times," and many feel unable to take more than one legal periodical, the publishers purpose to give still more than heretofore, and to make the LAW JOURNAL supply every want in the direction of a legal periodical, by giving every thing likely to be found in any serial law publication. They purpose to make it still more emphatically the best and the cheapest law paper published.

The Index of vol. 14 is issued with this number.