those who think as I do not that judicial ingenuity is well expended in raising technical points to defeat the rights of suitors, when the suitors themselves on both sides are willing to be tried on the merits of their case. I think the domain of the law is full enough of man-traps and spring-guns, without any assistance from me in setting them. How much injustice may be done by this one it is impossible to calculate."

ADVICE TO PRACTITIONERS

Obiter, he gives much useful advice to practitioners. Here are a few samples:

"Let it be understood that it is more or less dangerous to make naked and general objections to the evidence, even though successful in the Court below."

Plank-Road Co. vs. Rea, 8 Harris, 97.

In a case where the Counsel attempted to obtain the Court's opinion on a question no more vital than the decision of a bet. he said:

"No judgment is asked, but a mere opinion on an abstract question so that attorneys may make it up; as if the judges were expected to act as a kind of assistant counsel."

Commonwealth vs. Smith, 8 Harris, 100.

In regard to an appeal of no practical use, he wrote:

"But if the record were full of the most glaring errors appellee has corrected them all himself by voluntarily doing what it was the whole object of appellants to compel him to do. Indeed we are asked to say that he must do what he has done."

Hallowell's Appeal, 8 Harris, 215.

The pecuniary rights and duties of attorney and client in this State can never be misunderstood by those who are guided by the seven propositions laid down in Balsbaugh w. Frazer, 7 Harris, 98:

"But the rights and duties which spring from the relation of attorney and client, though very simple, seem not to be universally

understood. It ought to be known that the following propositions are undeniably established by authority and fortified by reason:

"1. The law of Pennsylvania, unlike that of England and of some of the other states in this Union, permits an attorney or counsellor to recover from those who employ him in his profession, whatever his services are reasonably worth; and the performance of such services at the instance or with the consent of the person about whose business they are rendered, implies an assumption to pay for them quantum meruit.

"2. A claim for such services, like any other which arises out of a bargain or contract, express or implied, may be defalked against an adverse demand, and the party whose claim is the largest is entitled to the judgment.

"3. An attorney who has money in his hands which he has recovered for his client, may deduct his fees from the amount, and payment of the balance is all that can be lawfully demanded.

"4. If the client is dissatisfied with the sum retained, he may either bring suit against the attorney, or take a rule upon him. In the latter case the Court will compel immediate justice, or inflict summary punishment on the attorney, if the sum retained be such as to show a fraudulent intent. But if the answer to the rule convinces the Court that it was held back in good faith, and believed not to be more than an honest compensation, the rule will be dismissed, and the client remitted to a jury trial.

"5. If, upon the trial, the jury finds that the attorney claimed no larger fee than he was justly entitled to, and in other respects behaved faithfully and well about his client's business, he should be allowed his demand, and a verdict rendered in his favor, if he has paid the balance; or a verdict against him only for the balance, if he has not paid it; or a certificate, as in this case, for what may still be coming to him.

"6. But if he has not acted in good faith; if he has attempted to defraud his client, or connived at the fraud of others; if he has received money without giving notice to the client within a reasonable time; if he has refused or neglected to pay it promptly upon demand; if he has denied that he had it when questioned by one entitled to know; or, if he has fraudulently claimed the right to retain out of it a larger fee than the jury find to be just; he forfeits all claim to any compensation whatever, and the verdict shall be in favor of the client for all the money collected, allowing no deductions for anything but actual payments. A party must not be put to two suits to recover the same debt.

"7. Where one or more other attorneys have been employed with him who receives the money, the latter may safely pay to his colleagues their fees out of the fund collected, and is entitled to credit, provided he has not paid more than what is just and reasonable. But if he wilfully and knowingly overpays them, he may be compelled to pay it again to the client. Where such a payment by one attorney to another, for services rendered to a common client, has been too large, but was made honestly, and in the belief that it was right, the client may not recover any part of it from him who paid it, but must seek it from him who has it. Such a payment is not like the voluntary payment of one man's debt by another. One attorney has the same right to the possession of the fund that another has, and if one should hand over the whole of it to another, in whom the client has manifested the same confidence, and placed in the same relation to himself, he would be guilty of no wrong, unless it was meant for some improper purpose."

PRINCIPLES OF JUDICIAL CONDUCT

No personal views of public policy caused him to forget that as a part of the judiciary his function was only to ascertain and declare the law as it is.

In the case of Sharpless vs. The Mayor of Philadelphia, 9 Harris, 159, which he says

"is beyond all comparison the most important cause that has ever been in the Court since the formation of the government," he declares: "However clear our convictions may be that a system is pernicious and dangerous, we cannot put it down by usurping authority that does not belong to us. That would be to commit a greater wrong than any which we could possibly repair by it."

In the first opinion delivered by him, December 29, 1851, in McAllister vs. Samuel, 5 Harris, 115, he swears fealty to the doctrine of stare decisis, which later, in the Bank of Pennsylvania vs. Commonwealth, 7 Harris, 151, he calls "the sheet anchor of our jurisprudence."

"Where a question has been once deliberately settled after solemn argument, it ought not to be disturbed unless it be so manifestly erroneous that it cannot be supported without doing violence to reason and justice."

There never was a stronger or more judicious statement of this doctrine with its limitations than in McDowell vs. Oyer, 9 Harris, 423:

"The judgment we are about to give might well be rested on the mere authority of the cases I have cited. When a point has been solemnly ruled by the tribunal of the last resort, after full argument and with the assent of all the judges, we have the highest evidence which can be procured in favor of the unwritten law. It is sometimes said that this adherence to precedent is slavish; that it fetters the mind of the judge, and compels him to decide without reference to principle. But let it be remembered that stare decisis is itself a principle of great magnitude and importance. It is absolutely necessary to the formation and permanence of any system of jurisprudence. Without it we may fairly be said to have no law; for law is a fixed and established rule, not depending in the slightest degree on the caprice of those who may happen to administer it. I take it that the adjudications of this Court, when they are free from absurdity, not mischievous in practice, and consistent with one another, are the law of the land. It is this law which we are bound to execute, and not any 'higher law,' manufactured for each special occasion out of our own private feelings and opinions. If it be wrong, the government has a department whose duty it is to amend it, and the responsibility is not in any wise thrown upon the judiciary. The inferior tribunals follow our decisions, and the people conform to them because they take it for granted that what we have said once we will say again. There being no superior power to define the law for us as we define it for others, we ought to be a law unto ourselves. If we are not, we are without a standard altogether. The uncertainty of the law-an uncertainty inseparable from the nature of the science-is a great evil at best, and we would aggravate it terribly if we could be blown about by every wind of doctrine, holding for true to-day what we repudiate as false to-morrow.

"Of course I am not saying that we must consecrate the mere blunders of those who went before us, and stumble every time we come to the place where they have stumbled. A palpable mistake, violating justice, reason, and law, must be corrected, no matter by whom it may have been made. There are cases in our books which bear such marks of haste and inattention, that they demand reconsideration. There are some which must be disregarded, because they cannot be reconciled with others. There are old decisions of

which the authority has become obsolete, by a total alteration in the circumstances of the country and the progress of opinion. Tempora mutantur. We change with the change of the times, as necessarily as we move with the motion of the earth. But in ordinary cases, to set up our mere notions above the principles which the country has been acting upon as settled and established, is to make ourselves not the ministers and agents of the law, but the masters of the law and the tyrants of the people."

TRIAL BY JURY

One of the clearest and most concise statements of the merits of our method of administering law blended and mixed with equity, and of the place of the jury in our system, is in Judge Black's dissenting opinion in the case of Finley vs. Aiken, 1 Grant, 94, which was an application by the vendor of land for a decree of specific performance against the vendee.

"I may as well confess myself at the outset to be among those who are steadfastly opposed to any extension whatever of chancery powers, except where it is manifestly necessary to prevent a failure of justice. I think it was not an ignorant prejudice, but high political wisdom, which caused our ancestors to refuse a court of chancery any place among their judicial institutions. The men who founded this Commonwealth, built up her reputation, achieved her liberties, and settled her lands, knew very well the amount of good and evil which such a court had done elsewhere, and upon sound and deliberate judgment they repudiated it as far as they could. The administration of law, blended and mixed with equity principles, was a happy conception. It is no 'bungling substitute,' but a most admirable improvement of both legal and chancery practice. There never was any natural reason for separating justice from law, or law from justice; and it was emphatically right to break down the artificial wall of partition which certain professional interests had built up between them in the mother country. Some of the states of this Union, after a full trial of chancery, have imitated our example; others are rapidly preparing to do so, and even English reform has gone far in the same direction. It is to be fervently hoped that we will not now extinguish the light by which the world has been walking. The right of trial by jury needs no vindication. It is necessary (if for nothing else) to check the