court and his maternal grandfather, Andrew S. Woods, was the Chief Justice of the court at one time. Judge Bingham is the first United States Circuit Judge New Hampshire has ever had.

Administration of Prisons in New York The administration of Sing Sing Prison is severely arraigned in a report made to Governor Sulzer of New York by George W. Blake, the Governor's special investigator of prisons and reformatories. Mr. Blake revives the story of the prison ring that controls a traffic in pardons and commutations of sentence. The report opens with a bitter attack on Warden Kennedy and on Col. Joseph F. Scott, who was removed as Superintendent of State Prisons by Governor Sulzer. Colonel Scott was appointed after a successful administration, covering more than ten years, of the affairs of the Elmira Reformatory. He was considered one of the foremost penologists in the country. The report says in part:

"Warden Kennedy has violated the law, he has permitted the creation and continuance of unbusinesslike methods and has caused the state to lose thoussands of dollars in a way that points directly to graft. He has made no attempt to protect the inmates from disease and vice, nor any effort to produce better conditions in this prison. During his administration scandals of the prison management have become rife in every section of the state.

"I do not wish to bear too heavily upon Warden Kennedy, because I am strongly of the opinion that the facts. set forth in this statement are due directly to Joseph F. Scott, who was for nearly two years Superintendent of Prisons. I have dug into the sterile soil of prison management to discover,

if possible, one redeeming trait in the management of prisons of this state during the period in which Colonel Scott was in control, but I have not found one sign to show that he was either competent, conscientious, or industrious."

Philadelphia Law Association

The Law Association of Philadelphia, at a meeting held June 3, unanimously adopted the following resolution opposing the recall:

"Resolved, That we are unalterably opposed to any change in the Constitution of this state, or of the United States, by which, by a vote of the people, the terms of office of duly elected or appointed judges may be shortened, or their judicial decisions be vacated or set aside."

A resolution in favor of the passage of a similar resolution by the state bar association was also unanimously adopted.

George Wentworth Carr explained why the committee charged with the introduction of a Municipal Court bill in the legislature had been unable to get a Senator to propose the form of constitutional amendment agreed upon, looking to the establishment of a Municipal Court. This was due to the preference of members of the Senate for a different sort of Municipal Court, which would not abolish the magistrates and make a constitutional amendment necessary.

Therefore the plan of the Law Association would have to wait until the pending bill had been disposed of.

The Committee on Legislation presented a report in which objections to House Bill 1789, regulating civil pleading and practice, were stated. The committee, however, admitted that the bill contained a number of admirable

features, some of which ought to be enacted into a statute and others left for rules of court.

Obituary

Ashbourne, Lord (Edward Gibson), who died May 22, was Lord Chancellor for Ireland in Lord Salisbury's first administration and for many years took an active part in the Irish policy of the Government.

Briggs, Frank O., former United States Senator from New Jersey, died May 8 in Trenton. He had been Mayor of Trenton, member of the State Board of Education, and State Treasurer. He was chosen to take the place of Senator John F. Dryden in 1907; his health gave way last year and he was succeeded by William Hughes of Patterson.

Crocker, George C., former president of the Massachusetts Senate, lawyer and author, died May 26. He was for twenty years a member of the Boston Transit Commission, and had previously

been chairman of the State Railroad Commission.

Jackson, Gen. Joseph Cooke, who for many years practised law in New York, being at one time an assistant federal attorney, died May 22.

Leake, General Joseph B., one of the oldest practitioners at the Chicago bar, died on June 1. He was appointed United States District Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in 1879, a position which he filled with marked ability for four and one-half years. In 1887 he was elected attorney for the Board of Education of the City of Chicago.

McLennan, Peter B., of Syracuse, Presiding Justice of the Fourth Department, Appellate Division, tripped while going downstairs and died May 8, aged

62. He was elected Supreme Court Justice in 1892, being re-elected in 1896. He was designated to the Appellate Division in 1898 and became Presiding Justice on Jan. 1, 1904.

Soper, Pliny L., former United States Attorney for Indian Territory, died in Kansas City Apr. 26. He was active in the movement for the admission of Indian and Oklahoma territories as a state.

Stone, Frederick Peter, president of the law publishing house of Bancroft-Whitney Company, died in San Francisco May 7. He was born in New Hampshire in 1841, and served in the Civil War. In September, 1865, he sailed for California, and entered the law department of H. H. Bancroft & Company. In 1886 the law book house of Bancroft

Whitney Company, was formed and Mr. Stone was first vice-president and later president. He retired from active work in 1909, but retained the title

of president of the corporation.

Swift, Theodore H., formerly presiding Judge of the New York Court of Claims, died at Potsdam, N. Y., June 9, aged 63. He served in that court from 1902 until 1911, until the court was superseded by the present Board of Claims.

Wise, John Sergeant, a brother of former United States Attorney Henry A. Wise of New York, died at the home of his son in Maryland May 12, aged 67. He served in the Confederate cause, later being graduated from the law school of the University of Virginia. He held the offices of United States Attorney for the eastern district of Virginia and Member of Congress. Afterward he practised law in New York City until 1911, when he retired because of ill health.

Volume XXV

Number 8

THE

HE nineteenth annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Bar Association held at Cape May, N. J., June 24-26, showed that body to be discharging its public functions in a creditable if not remarkable manner, with recognition of the duty of responsible leadership and initiative appropriate to a great state bar association. It is evident that the Pennsylvania Bar Association is progressive to the extent of pressing necessary reforms for the improvement of legal procedure and the reorganization of inferior courts, and of supporting beneficent penal legislation looking to the employment of prisoners. It is animated by such a sense of professional propriety as may be readily aroused by the reported existence of glaring and obvious evils like that of jury-fixing, but is less finely sensitive to the need of conciliating and overcoming differences of ethical conception with respect to such a matter as the practice of taking contingent fees. It is somewhat too conservative, perhaps, in hesitating to approve the Legislative Committee device through which many bar associations do effective work, in taking the attitude that issues of partisan politics should never be discussed by the Association, and in treating subjects political rather than legal, like the initiative, referendum and recall, as lying definitely outside its province. It is unable to make effective use of the expert committee device to

settle questions of a purely technical nature such as may be presented by proposed local government legislation.

The most inspiring feature of the meeting, to our minds, was the annual address, delivered by Robert C. Smith, K.C., of Montreal. Discussing the present and probable future position of the bar, Mr. Smith advocated high professional standards of independence, intelligence, and integrity, and said: —

"The bar has its faults, but it occupies a position in the world today of which its members should be proud. In the administration of justice between individuals, it has worked out, and is working out, reforms from day to day and principally such reforms as will aid the poorer and the weaker members of society. Expenses are being reduced, delays are being shortened-in fact, the bar is working to the end that the constitutional rights shall be the actual rights of the humblest citizen in the land.

"Notwithstanding all the criticisms to which it is subjected, the profession of the law still stands as a great necessity of society. In the very conditions which are largely responsible for these criticisms is evident the necessity for a learned and a wise profession in which the people may have confidence. The more intense modern life becomes, the more essential is it that the rapid movements of the day shall be in harmony with principles that have stood the test