for a saloon in premises where any county or municipal business is carried on. But a Common Pleas judge has held that the saloon and the court-room are not on the same premises. As one of our exchanges says: According to this construction of the law the excise board could lawfully refuse a license for the setting up of a saloon or bar in one corner of the court-room itself, or behind the judge's bench, but not elsewhere. If there were a hundred other rooms in a building occupied in part for a court-house or any other county or municipal business, every one could be turned into a licensed saloon under this new excise law." Then again there have been decisions that a license may not be revoked because the holder has added to the saloon industry that of dive-keeping; that the renewal of a license cannot be refused to a person already licensed in a building within two hundred feet of a church; and that a license may not be denied to a new applicant upon the same premises when the oid occupant retires from the business or dies. Truly that pen of Governor Flower seems to be stabbing the community in a manner very vexatious and exasperating except to the beer barons, the Wine and Liquor Dealers' Association, and the vast crowd of the dry.

An eminent and esteemed correspondent sends us some good-natured criticisms on the Supreme Court decision in the labor importation case. He desires his incognito strictly preserved, doubtless being afraid that his irreverent jesting at the expense of the court may injure his standing with them. But it occurs to us, and doubtless will to him on reflection, that his secretive craft is about as effectual as that of 'the African ostrich when hotly pursued by the hunter." It is a striking proof of the eminent gentleman's acuteness and humor that he has anticipated the substantial line of comment which we were proposing to ourselves to make when the joking season should come. It is well known that we never joke except in warm weather, and in vacation, and that at all other seasons we are oppressed by our constitutional melancholy. We may be allowed to supplement our correspondent's line of reasoning by observing that we are strongly in favor of protection against English clergymen. Let us raise our own, or do without. We don't desire England to minister to

us.

This consideration of itself would be sufficient to indicate our choice and announce our vote as between Messrs. Harrison and Cleveland at the coming election. And we shall beg Mr. Harrison carefully to look to it that his nominee for the present vacancy on the Supreme Court bench, is a person who is sound on this point. We want no foreign canons introduced into this country in church, law or artillery. We may also be allowed to remark that if we had stood in the shoes of the defeated counsel in the case under consideration, we should have insisted very strenuously that the word "services" in the statute was intended to cover church services.

Considering the temper of some the American Law Review's "Notes of Recent Decisions," we are led to suspect that the Honorable Jeremiah Travis of Canada is at work on them. For example, the critic says of the decision of the New York Court of Appeals, in Griffith v. Green, in respect to the absence of individual liability of stockholders of a manufacturing company where there has been no filing of a certificate of payment, for a subsequent increase of stock, that it is "untenable," and that "there is no sense in it." "No sense," because "there is no sense in the antiquated rule," laid down by the court, "that penal statutes are to be construed strictly." For ourselves we think there is a good deal of sense in the rule. It certainly seems sensible that men should not be held to penal liabilities upon mere inferences of legislative intention, in the absence of clear declarations of intention. As to the mischiefs growing out of the omission of the Legislature to provide for the case of a certificate of a subsequent increase of stock, they are chargeable to the Legislature and not to the courts. Any other decision than that made in Griffith v. Green, in our judgment would be a grossly intolerable example of judicial legislation, and if it were exercised against anybody but a bloated stockholder, it would cause the Reviewer's indignation nearly to choke him. The following also seems to us quite undeserved: "The fact that the greatest and most wealthy corporations in the country are domiciled in the State of New York seems to have influenced its judicial legislation (we intend to speak guardedly) to an undue degree." No court has been more outspoken against illegal trusts than the Court of Appeals,* and the decision in Griffith v. Green certainly is the exact contrary of "judicial legislation." The same may be said of Christenson v. Eno, 106 N. Y. 97, which the Reviewer seems to consider "judicial legislation." There the court refused to hold individually liable a holder of gratuitous stock, on the ground that not being liable to the corporation he was not liable to its creditors. The court explicitly declared that "the remedy for the evils attendant upon the creation and multiplication of shares of stock in corporations, not based upon corporate property, is with the Legislature." This also is the exact contrary of “judicial legislation.”