VOL. IX. No. 7.

JULY, 1897.

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`ALIFORNIA, in its relation to the Union as a State, dominates the Federal department of justice in the adminisration of President McKinley; and for the second time the attorney-generalship locally leaves the section of the Union east of the

Rocky Mountains. Hitherto several States have monopolized the office: Virginia, during four presidential terms, with Edmund Randolph, Charles Lee, William Wirt and John Y. Mason; Pennsylvania, seven times with William Bradford, Richard Rush, Henry D. Gilpin, Jeremiah T. Black, Titian J. Coffee, Wayne McVeagh and Benjamin H. Brewster; Massachusetts, six times with Theophilus Parsons, Levi Lincoln, Caleb Cushing, Ebenezer R. Hoar, Charles Devens and Richard Olney; Maryland, the same number with Robert Smith (who under Jefferson held the office only a few months and then joined the large army of totally forgotten Smiths), William Pinkney, Roger B. Taney and Reverdy Johnson, whose legal fame will ever remain green, and John Nelson, who made as inconsiderable a figure in office as did his President, John Tyler; Kentucky boasted possession of the office during four presidential terms: twice with John J. Crittenden, with John Breckenridge and James Speed; New York thrice with Benjamin F. Butler the great, William M. Evarts and Edwards Pierrepont; Ohio, also four times with Henry Stanbery, Edwin M. Stanton, Alphonso Taft and Judson Harmon; Georgia twice with John M. Berrient, Amos T. Ackerman; and, only once, Maine with Nathan Clifford; Delaware with Cæsar A. Rodney; Tennessee with Felix Grundy; South Carolina with Hugh S. Legaré; Connecticut with Isaac

Toucey; Missouri with Edward Bates; Indiana with William H. Miller; Arkansas with Augustus H. Garland, and Oregon with George H. Williams. Rhode Island remains the only New England State never represented in any Federal Cabinet and in company with Florida and Texas among Southern States. The early and less known attorney generals were the hardest worked of all, because during the first quarter century of the Federal government all legal questions that concerned the government were embarrassing by reason of their novelty.

Attorney-General Joseph McKenna was born of parents of Irish descent, in Philadelphia, fifty-four years ago, and was brought by them to California when he was twelve years old and there educated. It was the initial wish of his parents that he should embrace the priesthood, as the family were of the church of Rome, but young McKenna carried his pious rectitude into the legal profession and with that quality of soul has thus far illustrated it. His home was in the interior County of Solona. He had only been at its bar five years when he was elected its district attorney, and for a second term -SO popularly had he discharged his office with desirable tact and proof of high legal ability. "I tried to vindicate what learning I had," he once remarked to an intimate, "because my County of Solona bore the revered name of Solon, the lawgiver, who ameliorated the harsh statutes of Draco." With an intellectual cast of countenance of Hibernian type and eloquent eyes, Attorney-General McKenna at times shows as pretty bits of wit as belong to the land of Philpot Curran. "Joe McKenna," as his townsmen of Suisin the county seat

- affectionately called him, was its leading lawyer. His office adjoined the Court House, and one of his functions was as agent for lawyers in San Francisco and other legal centers of the State, to keep for them watch and ward of their calendar cases and attend to any necessary interlocutory motions. Being an Irishman by descent and an earnest American patriot, it was natural that he took early interest in politics and that he was on the Republican side. In his thirty-second year his County sent him to the State legislature, where he so made his mark that his constituents named him for Congress, but he was twice unsuccessful. He was, however, a believer in the Robert Bruce apothegm which a poet has rendered for juveniles by a song, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." A third trial proved successful, as did a fourth and a fifth canvass. One term being under the administration of President Harrison, who, when a vacancy occurred in the ninth Federal judicial district (in California) by the death of that intrepid Circuit-Judge Lorenzo Sawyer, appointed him to that high office. His juridical opinions, pronounced as appeal judge during the five years of his non-interrupted term, are to be found in the "Federal Reporter," beginning at about volume fortynine. When examined they will show succinctness of style, breadth of argument and precision of comment that will induce any layman even who reads them to exclaim, in the language of Ben Franklin's Quaker litigant, "Well, if this is not good common law it is good enough common sense."

Mr. McKenna's congressional career proved to be the stepping stone to his present office for, serving on the same committee with a congressman named McKinley, from Ohio, a strong friendship arose between them with mutual respect and esteem, especially as to McKenna's legal fence in committee room. So that when the whirligig of politics placed the Ohio comrade in the White House, being called upon by political exigencies to provide California with

a Cabinet place, the President bethought him of his old associate, McKenna, who had won new legal laurels on the bench, and conferred upon him his present office; affording the Executive an opportunity to put another good Republican lawyer in the vacated judicial place and, in the event of Justice Field retiring on a pension, placing the attorney general on the Supreme bench, following the precedent set by President Jackson in taking ex-Attorney-General Roger B. Taney from a Cabinet post and placing him on the Federal bench. While legal abilities often lead their possessor into political office, it is not often that political office leads toward a juridical position.

While circuit judge at San Francisco, Judge McKenna displayed tact as well as skill in construing treaties and expounding international law, when many controversies arose respecting the treatment of Chinese emigrés and their status of residency, thereby demonstrating his eminent fitness for his present post, which will contemplate many treaty questions and international legal inquiries touching the neutrality laws, the bearing of the Greek blockade upon American commerce and construction of tariff complications or reciprocal treaties, or in transcontinental railway and corporate trust questions. Any lawyer, who shall even listlessly turn the leaves of the many volumes of opinions of attorney generals in the libraries of the Federal departments, can understand and appreciate how delicate and far-reaching are the questions which come before an attorney general. He is also senior adviser to a hundred Federal district attorneys. With previous legislative, executive and judicial experience preceding his assumption of his present office, AttorneyGeneral McKenna's career, be it short or long, may be expected to add fresh luster to that already imparted to it by a Parsons, a Wirt, a Crittenden, a Johnson, a Cushing, a Black, and an Evarts.

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MONG those abuses of our day that make

the judicious grieve, are some which might be mended by a renewal of the sumptuary laws of our ancestors. For example there is the too frequent case of the millionaire's son who races through his patrimony, duplicating the Rake's Progress en route, tainting whomsoever he touches, presently arriving, a moral, mental, and physical wreck, at some asylum for the insane. Under well ordered sumptuary laws, properly enforced, such a thing could not be.

Yet, while a legislative revival of this nature would improve some matters, it would bring with it a long train of clearly foreseen undesirabilities; and so we must needs be content with that remnant of the old system which yet remains, namely, the restrictions upon the sale of intoxicating liquors.

The sumptuary laws (Latin sumptus, expense) were designed to prevent personal extravagance. Legislation of this kind dates back to ancient Sparta, where that somewhat mythical character, Lycurgus, is said to have enacted laws tending to the suppression of every desire towards luxurious living. All citizens were compelled to take their meals. at a public table, and from this not even the king was exempted. The fare was of the coarsest and plainest description. It was said of the famous "black broth" of Sparta that, if the Spartans had to live upon this, it is no wonder that they were so ready to die. The restrictions were not confined to indulgences of the palate: no foreign luxuries of any kind might be introduced, and all adornment of dwellings was prohibited by an inexorable law.

Six centuries later, that is, in the third century before Christ, we find sumptuary laws directed against extravagance in dress.

No man should wear a garment of silk "fit only for women," and as for the latter they might not wear a dress of different colors, possess more than half an ounce of gold, nor ride in a carriage in the city or within a mile of it, except on public ceremonies.

There is more reason in this legislation concerning wearing apparel than at first appears. The ancients believed that clothes exercised a distinct influence over the mind of the wearer. Thus Aristotle tells us that when Cyrus had overcome the Lydians, which were a warlike people, and designed to bring them to a more peaceable life, he changed their apparel and music and, instead of their short warlike coat, clothed them in long garments like women, and in a short time their minds were so mollified and abated that they forgot their former fierceness and became tender and effeminate. "Whereby it appeareth that there is not a little in the garment to the fashioning of the mind and conditions."

But, to return to our second last paragraph, the man or body of men that undertakes to curtail the privileges of women in the matter of finery invites trouble. Such a clamor was made and maintained by the fair sex that in twenty years the obnoxious law was repealed, and probably it had become a dead letter long before. "One of the most difficult things with women," said Bossus, "is to root out their curiosity for clothes and ornaments of the body."

The Lex Fannia, 161 B. C., regulated the expense which might be incurred at entertainments. At certain festivals, one hundred asses might be spent. On ten other days of each month the sum was limited to fifty asses; while for all remaining days ten asses were deemed sufficient. When we learn that our

nominal equivalents for these sums are one dollar and a half, forty-five cents, and fifteen cents respectively, we can readily believe can readily believe that the food at their tables was neither rich nor over-abundant; even if we agree with M. Say that gold at that period had three times the purchasing power that it has to-day. Subsequent laws, however, made a more liberal allowance, and under Augustus a citizen might expend for an entertainment as much as one hundred dollars.

Legislation concerning apparel was not unknown to Greece and Turkey; and in some of its forms it prevailed in the latter country down to a recent period. It is scarcely more than fifty years ago that a traveler saw a crier stand by the palace gate at Pera and make a long proclamation. He held in his hand a baton shod with iron, which he struck three times sonorously on the pavement, and when he had thus collected a crowd in the streets and windows, he announced in a loud voice that the Padisha, "taking into consideration the vain superfluities of female apparel, strictly enjoins every woman whose perigee touches the ground to cut it off as high as her ankles; and every woman whose headdress extends too far from her head is ordered to restrain it within due limits." It It should be told that the women of this period were given to expanding their head-dress with gauze and tinsel to an enormous size. There is an account somewhere of the method by which" due limits" were determined, and their transgression punished. An officer approached the suspected woman, solemnly measured her headgear with a rule, and cut off whatever exceeded the proper length. What a pity we moderns have not a similar law limiting the size of the theater hat.

In the fourteenth century Philip the Fair of France made sumptuary laws regulating his subjects' expenses even to the minutest detail. In the matter of clothing, no duke, count, or baron was to have more than four robes a year, and their wives were limited to the same number. Prelates and knights could

have no more than two, while every woman, whether single or married, whose annual income was less than two thousand livres, was allowed but one. Imagine the condition of affairs if the ladies of to-day were so restricted.

Under Charles VI an edict was issued: "Let no man presume to treat with more than a soup and two dishes!" According to Dr. Hammond, an old French law prohibited the use of any drink by women save water. An old Scotch law made it a crime for anyone under the rank of baron to use pies or baked meats.

The first sumptuary laws in England concerned indulgences of the palate. The Plantagenet who reigned in 1336 shut down upon "the excessive and over-many sorts of costly meats" which caused "many mischiefs" to happen to the people of the realm. No man, high or low, dining at home or dining out, should at any meal allow himself to be served with more than two courses, except only on the principal feasts of the year, when three courses were permitted.

Thirty years later the laws of that country took up the matter of wearing apparel. "For knights and squires cloth of silver with girdles. Persons of lower rank are not to wear any silk, nor embroider their cloth with any silver, nor wear any jewelry, and the cloth itself must not cost more than four marks the whole piece." Then follows the thoughtful enactment that "the clothiers shall make cloths sufficient of the aforesaid prices, so that this statute for default of such cloth, be in no wise infringed." This law did not last long, however, for a twelve-month later an act was passed repealing it and ordaining that "all people should be as free as they were before."

For a hundred years after this the people of England could dress as they pleased, when it appears that their costumes had reached such a pitch of extravagance and absurdity that sumptuary legislation was again deemed necessary. One thing that needed to be