Harvard Law Review. Published monthly, during the Academic Year, by Harvard Law Students. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, $2.50 PER ANNUM 35 CENTS PER NUMBER. Editorial Board. Wilfred Bolster, .... Editor-in-Chief. Guy Cunningham, Herbert H. Darling, Treasurer^ David T. Dickinson, Stephen A. Foster, Louis Hicks, Carleton Hunneman, Francis C. Huntington, Ralph A. Kellogg, Moses D. Kimball, James G. King, James M. Newell, Oliver Prescott, Jr., Ezra R. Thayer, Frank B. Williams, George E. Wright. A MOST instructive view of the legislation of the pas-t year is presented in the address delivered at the last meeting of the American Bar Asso- ciation, by the President, Hon. Henry Hitchcock.^ From the two hundred and nineteen public acts of Congress, and the eight thousand two hun- dred and ninety-four acts and joint resolutions passed by the twenty States which enacted laws during the year, Mr. Hitchcock has selected and sum- marized the most important. One of the most striking facts is the tendency toward paternal government shown by the enactment of numberless regula- tions upon trade and manner of life. As a single instance may be mentioned a statute in Michigan, " requiring the words * skimmed milk ' to be painted in letters an inch long on all vessels containing milk for sale from any part of which the cream has been removed." Another fact, especially worthy of notice, is the extent to which the constitutions of the newly admitted States carry out the tendency, already well developed in the more modern American constitutions, to narrow the field for legislative action by endless constitutional provisions covering sub- jects more properly to be dealt with by statutes. Mr. Hitchcock also notes the facts that many of the State constitutions restrict their legislatures to general, as distinguished from private, legislation ; and that thirty-nine out of the forty-four States prescribe biennial, instead of, annual, sessions. He refuses, however, to draw the conclusion, often suggested, that these facts show a distrust of representative institutions, or, in the words of Mr. Bryce, that " this method of restricting legislative opportunities for mischief, though a consistent application of the Puritan doctrine of original sin, is rather a pitiful result for self-governing democracy to have arrived at." Mr. Hitchcock, on the contrary, regards these restrictions as but another application of that characteristic principle of American government, the "check and balance" system. The mere fact that, because legislatures have been running wild, certain checks have been imposed, shows not the failure of democracy, but rather its power to regulate and keep under control its own machinery.
- A Year's Legislation. The President's Address at the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Amer-
ican Bar Association, August 20, 1890. Dando Printing & Publishing Co., Philadelphia.
