THE DANGER OF UNITING LAW WITH PHYSIC. It is a homely adage that a "jack at all trades is master of none." The truth of this saw is exemplified by the case of the People v. Weed, 3 N. Y. S. C. Rep. 50. In this case, Dr. Weed, who seems to have been an "ill weed," had issued the following circular advertisement: "Dr. Weed's female regulator: Married ladies should not take it. For reference, apply at his office. Office hours from 8 to 11 A. M., and from 1 to 5 P. M. "A Card.- Dr. Weed would respectfully announce "confinement" he has got himself into confinement, from which he can only expect to escape by jail delivery, unless there should be some miscarriage of justice. He promised his fair patients "an easy time," but for him there is reserved nothing but "hard labor." His precautions have proved abortive. We regret that the two learned professions of medicine and law should be temporarily deprived of the services of this eminent practitioner and commentator, but we must console ourselves by the reflection that the census will be meanwhile increased. Now all this shows the danger of a man's under to the ladies of Schenectady and vicinity that he is taking to be a lawyer and a doctor at the same time. The human intellect is unequal to such a strain. If the doctor had not taken pains to advertise his legal learning, his surgical and medical devices might possibly have escaped public attention. Or if he had restricted himself to giving the legal advice no harm would have come to him; for his legal principles were sound. It was the union of the two branches of knowledge that caused the trouble. Sulphur and saltpeter are harmless things when taken separately, but mix them together and they make a very dangerous and explosive substance, which sometimes hoists the manufacturer with his own petard. It will not different boughs of the tree of knowledge. Such answer to "mix drinks," nor to eat fruit plucked off danger lies in these "inflammatory branches of learning." at all times ready and happy to have a social consultation upon all matters relating to pregnancy or confinement, or in regard to the lawful production of a premature birth, which, in all proper cases, he will produce in a skillful manner, guarantee an easy time and a speedy recovery. For the information of all, I insert the statute in reference to the unlawful production of premature birth, which is as follows, to wit: Every woman who shall solicit of any person any medicine, drug or substance, or any thing whatever, and shall take the same, or shall submit to any operation or other means whatever with intent thereby to procure a miscarriage, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, upon conviction, be punished by imprisonment in the county jail not less than three months, nor more than one year, or by a fine, not exceeding one thousand dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment.' 2 R. S. 694, § 21. "It is a well-settled rule of law that a person cannot be compelled, under any circumstances, to answer a question, where the answer would convict or tend to convict the person of a crime. Ladies, your secrets are with yourselves, and yourselves alone, whether in the street, at your homes, or as a witness, and you "DR. WEED, The versatile Doctor was indicted for procuring an abortion, and on the trial the foregoing circular was put in evidence, and was doubtless instrumental in procuring his conviction. The court, evidently thinking he "knew more than the law allows," sent him to prison to inwardly digest his knowledge. Alas for the Doctor's kind intentions and multifarious knowledge! He could possibly by means of his legal acumen save his patients; himself he could not save. By undertaking to save his patrons from We are glad the State has taken hold of this Weed and uprooted him. He was one of that sort of tares which the enemy sowed while the husbandmen slept. The husbandmen of "Schenectady and vicinity" can sleep more securely while he is scorching in the blaze of public wrath and contempt. Let him wilt. We thought, however, that the novelty and audacity of his pretensions deserved a passing notice at our hands. CURRENT TOPICS. The most important legal news of the week from England is the announcement that the Government is to exert itself again in favor of a code. The lord chancellor is reported to have said in the House of Lords, that he hoped on the part of the Government, at the beginning of next session, to make a proposal for a codification of the common law; and it seems probable, in the present state of affairs, that what Lord Cairns proposes and Lord Selborne assents to, is likely to become a law. We remember an instance in which a learned and punctilious judge of the Supreme Court of this State, while sitting at special term, intimated to an attorney, who, the day being warm, had laid aside his coat, that unless he resumed that garment at once, he would commit him for contempt. The Solicitors' Journal speaks of another case which serves to illus trate the changing tastes under "changed skies." The case arose in Pondicherry, India, and an appeal has recently been heard before the Cour de Cassation at Paris. The following is the narrative: M. Ponnoutamby is a native pleader in the courts at Pondicherry. On the 8th of January last he appeared in court wearing shoes and stockings. The judge at once drew his attention to the circumstance, and informed him that this modification of his costume was entirely contrary to regulation. M. Ponnoutamby pleaded that the state of his health required the indulgence, and promised to procure a doctor's certificate to that effect. He did not do so, however, but on the 15th January again appeared in the objectionable costume, and this time claimed the right to do So. of Congress, at Washington," or at his option the word "copyright," together with the year the copyright was entered, and the name of the party by whom it was taken out, thus: "Copyright, 18-, by A. B." For recording and certifying any instrument of writing for the assignment of a copyright, the Librarian shall receive from the persons to whom the service is rendered one dollar; and for every copy of an assignment one dollar; said fee to cover in either case a certificate of the record, under seal of the Librarian of Congress, and all fees so received shall be paid into the Treasury of the United States. In the construction of this act the words "engraving," "cut" and "print" shall be applied only to pictorial illustrations or works connected with the fine arts, and no prints or labels designed to be used for any other articles of manufacture shall be entered under the copyright law, but may be registered in the Patent Office. The Commissioner of Patents is charged with the supervision and control of the entry or register of such prints or labels, in conformity with the regulations provided by law as to copyright of prints, except there shall be paid for recording the title of any print or label not a trademark six dollars, which shall cover the expense of furnishing a copy of the record under the seal of tho Commissioner of Patents to the party entering the same. This act is to take effect on and after the 1st The judge promptly forbade him to plead, and prepared a formal complaint on the subject to the president of the tribunal. The president called a meeting of all the judges to consider the case, and to weigh the question, "le conseil Ponnoutamby, a-t-il le droit de porter des bas et des souliers Européens?" Without deciding this point, the court were clearly of opinion that M. Ponnoutamby's persistence in wearing shoes and stockings in the face of the repeated observations of the judge, was a departure from the respect due to a court of justice, and that they could not overlook these disrespectful acts (actes irrévérencieux), and they accordingly sentenced him to be suspended from practice for ten days. He ap- day of August next. pealed to the court at Paris, and the case was heard on the 10th ult. It appeared that a law passed in 1842 provided that native pleaders shall wear in court "the costume commonly adopted in their respective castes." Now the native costume has been gradually superseded by the European, and when a native adopts the latter garb he no longer takes off his shoes when he enters a house. Moreover, the colonial minister, in a despatch dated 3d June, 1873, had expressly stated that in his opinion it was lawful at Pondicherry for a native pleader to wear shoes and stockings in court. The Court of Appeal took this view, and decided in favor of the appellant; so when the next mail reaches India, M. Ponnoutamby will be able to resume his shoes and stockings. The new law relating to patents, trade-marks and copyrights provides that no person shall maintain an action for the infringement of his copyright unless he shall give notice thereof by inserting in the several copies of every edition published, in the title page, immediately following, if it be a book; or, if a map, chart, musical composition, print, cut, engraving, photograph, painting, drawing, chromo, statue, statuary, or model, or design, intended to be perfected and completed as a work of fine art, by inscribing upon some visible portion thereof, or of the substance on which the same shall be mounted, the following words: "Entered, according to act of Congress, in by A. B., in the office of the Librarian the year USE OF THE TERM "& CO." The quite frequent use of the words "and company," or the term " & Co." by merchants and traders, when in fact no person is represented by that addition to their name; the using of such term being in direct violation of the laws of New York State (Laws of 1833, chap. 281), and, as there have been several adjudications recently which involved this statutory prohibition, resulting unfavorably and in loss or damage to the creditor, it seems desirable that some of the decisions touching this law be examined, that the litigant may act in the premises understandingly. The law of 1833, in effect, reads "that any person carrying on business under the term '& Co.' when it shall in fact represent no actual partner or partners, for such violation shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and liable to be punished by a fine not exceeding $1,000. A case which presents a certain phase of this law squarely before the court, is that of Swords v. Owen, 43 How. 176, where such defense was in direct words pleaded, and was allowed to prevail, the plaintiff therein being prevented from recovering his debt. pleaded and proved as alleged, as otherwise the defense It is prerequisite to this defense that it be distinctly cannot be made available to the defendant. Button v. McCauley, 38 Barb. 413; Wright v. Delafield, 25 N. Y. 266; Brazill v. Isham, 2 Kern. 9. In the recent case of O'Toole v. Garvin et al., decided vol. Supreme Court Rep. 118, such defense was not in the first department, and just reported in the third directly pleaded; but, notwithstanding that fact, after the case was in, it appearing during the trial that the plaintiff had no partner, although carrying on business and using the term "& Co." in his affairs; on motion, at the circuit, the court dismissed the complaint; whereupon the plaintiff appealed to the general term. On such appeal, after full argument, before that tribunal, of the issues involved, it was held, that the dismissal was error, for the reason that such defense could not be made available unless it be specifically pleaded; the dismissal was accordingly set aside, and a new trial ordered. Doubtless before the Code the defense considered in the case of Brazill v. Isham would have been allowed under the general issue. Upon a first reading of the statute, it being in the nature of a penalty, it would seem that the plaintiff creditor ought not to lose his remedy and be defeated finally in his action, simply on account of doing business in that manner, but that the action of the defendant or debtor should be a resort to proceedings in nature of a penal offense instead. To prevent a recovery in an action, for instance, for goods sold and delivered, when in truth the debtor knew, or might have known the character and manner in which the plaintiff did business, seems an injurious principle, especially as the debtor himself is not injured thereby, having received the plaintiff's goods, and not having rendered quid pro quo. What, then, is the reason or logic of these decisions? It is adjudged in some of the cases, which may be taken as valid (quasi?) reason and authority, that the plaintiff acted under a prohibited style and name, and that the consideration in cases of this description is an unlawful one, and hence the promise is not obligatory. McKyring v. Bull, 16 N. Y. 297, 309; Code, § 149; 3 R. S. (5th ed.) 978, §§ 42, 43. And thus the current run of decisions hold that such defense, if specifically pleaded by the debtor, shall be held sufficient to defeat the creditor's right of recovery; and that it is new matter constituting an affirmative defense, which, by the provisions of the Code, must be set up in the answer to be allowed to prevail at the trial. In most of the States there is no such prohibitory statute as in New York, and it may be a pertinent question for the legislator to consider, whether it would not be wiser and conserve the interests of trade and commerce better, to have the present law of that State modified or repealed. JOHN F. BAKER. EVARTS' EULOGY ON THE LATE CHIEF JUS- The eulogy of Mr. William M. Evarts on the late Chief Justice Chase, delivered before the Alumni, faculty and students of Dartmouth, on Wednesday week, was worthy of the subject and the speaker. We have space for only that portion of it which speaks of Mr. Chase after his accession to the Bench. ACCESSION TO THE SUPREME BENCH. description of the system as he found it. He said, at the outset of his Administration, "that he was like a man letting rooms at one end of his house, while the other end was on fire." Some criticism of the Secretary's resignation and of the occasion of it at the time sought to impute consequences of personal ascerbity between these eminent men, and the mischiefs of competing ambitious and discordant counsels for the public interests. But the appointment of Mr. Chase to the Chief Justiceship of the United States silenced all this evil speech and evil surmise. There is no doubt that Mr. Chase greatly desired this office, its dignity and durability both considered, the greatest gratification to personal desires, and the worthiest in public service, and in public esteem, that our political establishment affords. Fortunate, indeed, is he who, in the estimate of the profession of the law, and in the general judgment of his countrymen, combines the great natural powers, the disciplined faculties, the large learning, the larger wisdom, the firm temper, the amiable serenity, the stainless purity, the sagacious statesmanship, the penetrating insight, which make up the qualities that should preside at this high altar of justice, and dispense to this great people the final decrees of a government "not of men, but of laws." To whatever President it comes, as a function of his supreme authority, to assign this great duty to the worthiest, there is given an opportunity of immeasurable honor for his own name, and of vast benefits to his countrymen, outlasting his own brief authority, and perpetuating its remembrance in the permanent records of justice, "the main interest of all human society," so long as it holds sway among men. John Adams, from the Declaration of Independence down, and with the singular felicity of his line of personal descendants, has many titles to renown, but by no act of his life has he done more to maintain the constitutional liberties which he joined in declaring, or to confirm his own fame, than by giving to the United States the great Chief Justice Marshall, to be to us, forever, through every storm that shall beset our ship of state, "Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw, And saving them that eye it." In this disposition Mr. Lincoln appointed Mr. Chase to the vacant seat, and the general voice recognized the great fitness of the selection. THE MAGISTRATE AND THE MAN. I may be permitted to borrow from the well-considered and sober words of an eminent judge, the senior associate on the bench of the Supreme Court, words that will carry weight with the country, which mine could not, a judicial estimate of this selection. Mr. Justice Clifford says: Appointed, as it were, by common consent, he seated himself easily and naturally in the chair of justice and gracefully answered every demand upon the station, whether it had respect to the dignity of the office or to elevation of the individual character of the incumbent, or to his firmness, purity, or vigor of mind. From the first moment he drew the judicial robes around him, he viewed all questions submitted to him as a judge in the calm atmosphere of the bench, and with the deliberate consideration of one who feels that he is determining issues for the remote and unknown future of a great people. A somewhat persistent discrepancy of feeling and opinion between the President and the Secretary in regard to an important office in the public service induced Mr. Chase to resign his portfolio and Mr. Lincoln to acquiesce in his desire. No doubt it is not wholly fortunate in our Government that the distribution of patronage, a mixed question of party organization and public service should so often harass and embarrass Magistratus ostendit virum-the magistracy shows the Administration even in difficult and dangerous out the man. A great office, by its great requirements times. Mr. Lincoln's ludicrous simile is an incomparable and great opportunities, calls out and displays the great powers and rare qualities which, presumably, have raised the man to the place. Let us consider this last public service and last great station, as they exhibit Mr. Chase to a candid estimate. And, first, I notice the conspicuous fitness for judicial service of the mental and moral constitution of the man. All through the lively contests of the vehement politics of his times, his share in them had embodied decision, moderation, serenity, and inflexible submission to reason as the master and ruler of all controversies. Force, fraud, cunning, and all lubric arts and artifices, even the beguilements of rhetoric, found no favor with him, as modes of warfare or means of victory. So far then, from needing to lay down any weapons, or disuse any methods in which he was practiced, or learn or assume new habits of mind or strange modes of reasoning, Mr. Chase, in the working of bis intellect and the frame of his spirit, was always judicial. It was not less fortunate for the prompt authority of his new station, so dependent upon the opinion of the country, that his credit for great abilities and capacity for large responsibilities were already established. Great repute, as well as essential character, are justly demanded for all elevated public stations, and especially for judicial office, whose prosperous service in capital junctures turns mainly on moral power with the community at large. Both these preparations easily furnished the Chief Justice with the requisite aptitude for the three relations of prime importance upon which his adequacy must finally be tested; I mean his relation to the Court as its presiding head, his relation to the profession as masters of the reason and debate over which the Court is the arbiter, and his relation to the people and the State in the exercise of the critical constitutional duties of the Court as a coördinate department of the Government. HIS GRACIOUS AUTHORITY. In a numerous Court, that the Chief Justice should have a prevalent and gracious authority, as first among equals, to adjust, arrange and facilitate the cooperative working of its members, will not be doubted. For more than 60 years, at least, this Court has felt this authority-potens et lenis denominatio—in the presence of the two celebrated Chief Justices who filled out this long service. The great experience and great age had supported, and general conformity of political feeling, if not opinion, on the bench, had assisted, this relation of the Chief Justice to the Court. When Mr. Chase was called to this station he found the bench filled with men of mark and credit, and his accession made an exactly equal division of the Court between the creations of the old and of the new politics. In these circumstances the proper maintenance of the traditional relation of the Chief Justice to the Court was of much importance to its unbroken authority with the public. That it was so maintained was apparent to observation, and Mr. Justice Clifford, speaking for the Court, has shown it in a most amiable light. Throughout his judicial career he has always maintained that dignity of carriage and that calm, noble, and unostentatious presence that uniformly characterized his manners and deportment in the social circle; and in his intercourse with his brethren his suggestions were always couched in friendly terms, and were never marred by severity or harshness. As for the judgment of the bar of the country, while it gave its full assent to the appointment of Mr. Chase as an elevated and wise selection by the President, upon the general and public grounds which should always control, there was some hesitancy on the part of the lawyers as to the completeness of Mr. Chase's professional training, and the special aptitude of his intellect, to thread the tangled mazes of affairs which form the body of private litigations. The doubt was neither unkind nor unnatural, and it was readily and gladly resolved, under the patient and laborious application, and the accurate and discriminating investigation, with which the Chief Justice handled the diversified subjects, and the manifold complexities which were brought into judgment before him. In fact, the original dubitation had overlooked the earlier distinction of Mr. Chase at the bar in some most important forensic efforts, and had erred in comparing, for their estimate, Mr. Chase entering upon judicial employments with his celebrated predecessors, as they showed themselves at the close, not at the outset, of their long judicial service. I feel no fear of dissent from the profession in saying that those who practiced in the Circuit or in the Supreme Court while he presided, as well as the large and widely diffused body of lawyers who give competent and responsible study to the reports, recognize the force of his reason, the clearness of his perceptions, the candor of his opinions, and the lucid rhetoric of his judgments, as assuring his rank with the eminent judges of our own and the mother country. A LAWYER AND A STATESMAN. But, in the most imposing part of the jurisdiction and jurisprudence of the Court; in its dominion over all that belongs to the law of nations, whether occupied with the mighty questions of peace and war, and the multitudinous disturbances of public and private law which follow the change from one to the other; or with the complications of foreign intercourse and commerce with all the world, which the genius of our people is constantly expanding; in its control, also, of the lesser public law of our political system, by which we are a nation of republics, where the bounds of State and Federal authority need constant exploration, and require accurate and circumspect adjustment; in its final arbitrament on all conflicts and encroachments by which the great co-ordinate departments of the Government are to be confined to their appropriate spheres; in that delicate and superb supremacy of judicial reason, whereby the Constitution confides to the deliberations of this Court the determination, even, of the legality of legislation, and trusts it, nevertheless, to abstain itself from law-making-in all these transcendent functions of the tribunal the preparation and the adequacy of the Chief Justice were unquestioned. Accordingly we find in the few years of his service, before his decline in health, in the crowd of causes bred by the civil war, which pressed the Court with much embarrassment, and loaded it with unprecedented labors, that the Chief Justice gave conspicuous evidence, in repeated instances, of that union of the faculties of a lawyer and a statesman which alone can satisfy the exactions of this highest jurisdiction, unequaled and unexampled in any judicature in the world. To name these conspicuous causes merely, without unfolding them, would carry no impression, and time fails for any demonstrative criticism upon them. There are two passages in the judicial service of Mr. Chase which, attracting great attention and exciting some difference of opinion at the time of the transactions, invite a brief consideration at your hands. HIS INFLUENCE IN THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL The first political impeachment in our constitutional history, involving, as it did, the accusation of the President of the United States, required the Chief Justice to preside at the trial before the Senate, creating thus the Tribunal to which the Constitution had assigned this high jurisdiction. Beyond the injunction that the Senate, when sitting for the trial of impeachment, should be "on oath," the Constitution gave no instruction to fix or ascertain the character of the procedure, the nature of the duty assigned to the specially organized Court, or the distribution of authority between the Chief Justice and the Senate. The situation lacked no feature of gravity, no circumstance of solicitude, and the attention of the whole country and of foreign nations watched the transaction at every stage of its progress. No circumstances could present a greater disparity of political or popular forces between accuser and accused, and none could be imagined of more thorough commitment of the body of the Court, the Senate, both in the interests of its members in their political feeling and their prejudgments, all tending to make the condemnation of the President upon all superficial calculations inevitable. The effort of the Constitution to guard against mere partisan judgment by requiring a two-third vote to convict was paralyzed by the complexion of the Senate, showing more than fourfifths of that body of the party which had instituted the impeachment and was demanding conviction. To this party, as well, the Chief Justice belonged as a founder, a leader, a recipient of its honors, and a lover of its prosperity and its fame. The President, raised to the office from that of Vice-President, to which alone he had been elected by the deplored event of Mr. Lincoln's assassination, was absolutely without a party in the Senate or in the country, for the party whose suffrages he had received for the Vice-Presidency was the hostile force in his impeachment. And to bring the matter to the worst, the succession to all the Executive power and patronage of the Government, in case of conviction, was to fall into the administration of the President of the Senate, the creature, thus, of the very court invested with the duty of trial and power of conviction. Against all these immense influences, confirmed and inflamed by a storm of party violence beating against the Senate-house without abatement through the trial, the President was acquitted. To what wise or fortunate protection of the stability of government does the people of this country owe its escape from this great peril? Solely, I cannot hesitate but think, to the potency of a justice-loving, law-respecting people, of the few decisive words of the Constitution which, to the common apprehension, had impressed upon the transaction the solemn character of trial and conviction, under the sanction of the oath to bind the conscience, and not of the exercise of mere power, of which its will should be its reason. In short, the Constitution had made the procedure judicial, and not political. It was this sacred interposition that stayed this plague of political resentments which, with less sober and intelligent populations, have thwarted so many struggles for free government and equal institutions. REPUBLICAN GRUDGES NOT SHARED BY THE PEOPLE. Over this scene, through all its long agitations, the Chief Justice presided with firmness and prudence, with circumspect comprehension and sagacious forecast of the vast consequences which hung, not upon the result of the trial as affecting any personal fortunes of the President, but upon the maintenance of its character as a trial, upon the prevalence of law, and the supremacy of justice, in its methods of procedure, in the grounds and reasons of its conclusion. That his authority was greatly influential in fixing the true constitutional relations of the Chief Justice to the Senate, and establishing a precedent of procedure not easily to be subverted; that it was felt throughout the trial with persuasive force in the maintenance of the judicial nature of the transaction, and that it never went a step beyond the office which belonged to him, of presiding over the Senate trying an impeachment, is not to be doubted. The President was acquitted. The disappointment of the political calculations which had been made upon what was felt by the partisans of impeachment to be an assured result was unbounded, and resentments, rash and unreasoning, were visited upon the Chief Justice who had influenced the Senate to be judicial, and had not himself been political. No doubt this impeachment trial permanently affected the disposition of the leading managers of the Republican party toward the Chief Justice, and his attitude thereafter toward that party in his character of a civilian. But the people of the country never assumed any share of these resentments of party feeling. The charge against him, if it had any shape or substance, came only to this-that he brought into the Senate under his judicial robes no concealed weapons of party warfare, and that he had not plucked from the Bible on which he took and administered the judicial oath the commandment for its observance. THE LEGAL-TENDER QUESTION. Not long after Mr. Chase's accession to the bench, there came before the court a question, in substance and in form as grave and difficult as any that its transcendant jurisdiction over the validity of the legislation of Congress has ever presented, or, in any forecast we can make of the future, will ever present for its judgment; I mean the constitutionality of that feature and quality of the issues of United States notes, during the war, which made them a legal tender for the satisfaction of private debts. This measure was one of the great administrative expedients for marshaling the wealth of the country, as rapidly, as equably, and as healthfully to the energies of production and industry as might be, and so as seasonably to meet the immeasurable demands of the public service in the stress of the war. That it was debated and adopted with full cognizance of its critical character, and with extreme solicitude that all its bearings should be thoroughly explored, and upon the same peremptory considerations upon which the master of a ship cuts away a mast or jettisons cargo, or the surgeon amputates a limb, was matter of history. Mr. Chase, as Secretary of the Treasury, with a reluctance and repuguance which enhanced the weight of his counsels, approved the measure as one of necessity for the fiscal operations of the government, which knew no other seasonable or adequate recourse. Upon this imposing and authoritative advice of the financial minister the legal tender trait of the paper issues of the government was adopted by Congress, and without his sanction, presumptively, it would have been denied. A COURT SITTING IN JUDGMENT ON ITSELF. And now, when, after repeated argument at the bar and long deliberations of the court, the decision was announced, the determining opinion of the Chief Jus |