no exaggeration to say that, when at his prime, a quarter of a century ago, he stood the very first among English judges, and that his reputation will last as one of the greatest judges of modern times. The fol lowing sketch of him appeared in the Law Times (London) for January 18th:

Colin Blackburn was the second son of Mr. John Blackburn, of Killearn, in the county of Stirling, by Rebecca, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Gillies, and was born in 1813, was educated at Eton, whence he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1835 as eighth Wrangler, and was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in Michaelmas Term, 1838. Mr. Blackburn does not appear at any time to have commanded a large practice, but he spent several years of his life in law reporting. In conjunction with Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis, he was engaged in the preparation of Ellis and Blackburn's reports. The series was carried on for eight volumes, and was followed by the single volume of Ellis, Blackburn, and Ellis, published in 1858. He was also the author of a treatise on the Contract of Sale, called by Mr. Benjamin "that admirable work," which was the standard authority until the appearance of the fuller treatise of Benjamin in 1868.

On the promotion of Erle to the Chief Justiceship of the Common Pleas in 1859, Lord Campbell, to the general surprise, appointed his fellow-countryman to a puisne judgeship in the Queen's Bench. The story goes that Lord Campbell consulted Blackburn as to whom he should appoint. Blackburn mentioned several names, whereupon the Chancellor replied: "I do not think, Mr. Blackburn, that any of these gentlemen would make so good a judge as yourself." As Lord Chief Justice, Lord Campbell had doubtless learnt to appreciate the reporter's merits. The opinion of Lord Campbell was amply borne out by the subsequent career of the judge, and when, on the passing of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 1876, Blackburn was appointed, together with the late Lord Gordon, one of the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, the approval of the profession was as emphatic as its disapproval of his original appointment.

During his occupancy, from 1859 to 1876, of a seat in the Queen's Bench, Blackburn proved himself to be a learned and capable judge. In 1863 he presided over the trial at the Central Criminal Court of Buncher and others who had been engaged in extensive forgeries of Bank of England notes. The most famous trial, however, in which he was engaged, was the special commission, of which the late Mr. Justice Mellor was also a member, sent to Manchester for the trial of Allen, Larkin, Gould, Maguire, and Shore, who were charged with the attempted rescue of Col. Kelly and Capt. Deasy from the prison van, and with the murder of Sergt. James Brett on the 18th September, 1867. Mr. Justice Blackburn's name is also associated with another great historic occasion. Mr. Eyre was Governor of Jamaica in October, 1865, and he was charged with acts of oppression and cruelty in the administration of his office, especially in the execution of Gordon, a ringleader among the rioters, and of Marshal, another rioter. Martial law was put into force in the island for a period of thirty days and the ordinary law superseded; and many severe punishments were inflicted on those who took part in the disturbances. The learned judge had to decide in the Queen's Bench, early in 1868, whether an information by the Attorney-General or an indictment would lie against Mr. Eyre on account of

these proceedings under the 11th and 12th Will. 3,1 and 42 Geo. 3,2 by the provisions of which a governor of a colony, or other person in the public employment out of Great Britain, who has been guilty of any crime or misdemeanor in the exercise of his office, may be prosecuted in the court of King's Bench in England. Mr. Justice Blackburn held that the statutes were applicable, and that an indictment would lie.

The civil causes in which Mr. Justice Blackburn was concerned as a judge, and which appear in the reports, are numerous and important; the most prominent being those relating to the right of support of adjacent land and foreign judgments. They will be in the minds of all lawyers with any pretension to legal knowledge.

After seventeen years' service in the Queen's Bench, Sir Colin Blackburn was, in October, 1876, created a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary under the act of 1876 with a life peerage.

Lord Blackburn retired in 1886. It was then found that, by a singular omission in the act of 1876, a retiring Lord of Appeal was no longer entitled to take part in the legislative business of the House, and another act was passed to enable him to do so. Lord Blackburn very rarely took part in the debates. He did, however, oppose one of Lord Galloway's motions with respect to the Mar peerage, and he also spoke in 1878 when a Matrimonial Causes Bill was before the House of Lords. He was never married.

In the same publication appeared the following sonnet, entitled:

"BLACKBURN."

A name to hold in honor! England owes

A debt to thee which she can never pay.

As to the sturdy oak the sapling grows,

As glimmering morn becomes the perfect day,
So you, in strenuous labor of your youth,
Upon the stony subsoil of the law

Mortared great knowledge with a love of truth,
And built a fame which all who knew you saw
Project itself upon your growing life.
Great Prince of Interrupters

(how long now

Your train of imitators in the strife!)

Your hasty speech was but the upward flow
From wells of learning. Ne'er was yours the rôle
Of empty vaporing in the public eye

On themes not legal. Your high-soaring soul
Sought Duty's path, wherever it might lie.

Neither the platform's nor the Senate's heat
Distracted you, or warped your equal view
Of all mankind. Thus, on the printed sheet,
Colleagued by Cockburn, Bramwell, Brett, are you
Enshrined in judgments of both grit and core,
Which must survive till law shall be no more.

SENATOR TILLMAN'S DENUNCIATION OF THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY.- In the sensational speech delivered by Senator Benj. R. Tillman, of South Carolina, on the floor of the Senate of the United States on the 29th of January, he is reported to have used the following language:

The money-changers are in the temple of our liberties, and have bought the sentinels on guard * ** * The encroachments of the Federal judiciary, and the supineness and venality— corruption, I say of the representative branches of the Government are causes of deep concern to all thinking and patriotic men. We are fast drifting into government by injunction in the interest of monopolies and corporations, and the Supreme Court, by one corrupt vote, annuls an act of Congress looking to the taxation of the rich.

If Senator Tillman's speech had been delivered by some other nervous senators, whose speeches represent little more than the supreme thought of the hour, it would have received little attention. But it received an enormous measure of public attention. This was due not merely to the extreme character of his utterances, but also to the wide-spread belief that they were the utterances of a thoroughly honest man. But in using the expression "one corrupt vote," Senator Tillman did not use an honest expression. The Income Tax Law was decided to be unconstitutional by reason of the fact that, between the two hearings one member of the Supreme Court of the United States changed his vote; voting to uphold the statute upon the first hearing and to overthrow it upon the second. There is absolutely no ground in this fact for charging the judge with corruption, and no suggestion has been made in any respectable public print of any other ground for making such a charge. It amounts to this, and nothing more: that a judge is charged with corruption for changing his mind on a very doubtful question after hearing it re-argued. Judges, nay, whole benches of judges, have often done this. If there were not some hope in doubtful cases of changing the views of the judges upon a re-argument, petitions for rehearing would never be filed. We are sorry that Mr. Justice Shiras did not, at least after the second argument, and after changing his mind upon the question, write an opinion, giving his reasons for his views. We do agree with his final conclusion. We regard the Income Tax Decision as a wretched decision, in favor of which little can properly be said. But we are opposed to wholesale accusations of corruption leveled against public men. Such an accusation is grievous indeed, especially when, in addition to its being absolutely without foundation, it is leveled from the high place of a senator of the United States against a judicial officer of the United States, who, by reason of the decencies of his position, is not permitted to reply. The policies which Senator Tillman represents, whether wise or illusory, are receiving the support of an hourly-increas

ing number of honest and earnest minds. But no cause, however meritorious, can be advanced to a position even of respectability by the use of such reckless language in debate.

On the

THE AFFIRMANCE OF THE DECISION IN THE STANFORD CASE. 2d of March, the Supreme Court of the United States announced its decision affirming the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Federal Circuit in the case of the United States v. Stanford, to which we have already made frequent allusions in this publication. At the time of this writing we have not received a printed copy of the opinion, and know nothing of it further than what has been communicated in the columns of the newspaper press. From this it appears that the opinion of the court was written by Mr. Justice Harlan, and that the court was unanimous. It also appears, from the same source of information, that the court based its decision on the ground on which the Circuit Court of Appeals proceeded, which was also one of the grounds on which Mr. Circuit Judge Ross rested his decision in the first instance,- namely, that the statutes under which aid was granted by the United States to the Pacific Railroad Company show, when construed with reference to the history of the time, that it was not the intention of Congress to hold the individual stockholders of the railroad company liable for the debt. We predicted the affirmance of the decision, and upon this ground. It seemed to us one of those vague and shadowy grounds on which a decision could be placed that could not be easily argued against, and that all the other points made in behalf of the Stanford estate were so grossly untenable that the court could not possibly take them up except to refute them. It seemed to us the simplest proposition that when the Government made a contract with a corporation, organized or to be organized under the laws of a State whose constitution and statutes did not confer upon stockholders immunity from liability to pay the debts of the corporation, the superadded security of this individual liability inured to the United States by the mere operation of law, just as it would inure to any other creditor. It also seemed to us that the United States could not be regarded as having waived this superadded liability unless some affirmative expression indicative of such waiver could be discovered in some of the acts of Congress under which the aid had been granted and the indebtedness created. We regarded this as necessarily following from the principle that, in construing public grants, nothing is to be taken against the public except what appears in the grant, by express words or by

necessary implication. But in this Pacific Railroad case there is neither an express word, nor anything from which a necessary or unavoidable inference can be drawn, that the United States intended to throw away any superadded security which might become available to it in case the corporation failed to keep its obligation to repay the principal and interest of the bonds loaned it at the expiration of the prescribed period. It seemed to us palpably true-as true as mathematics that the privilege of the members of a business corporation of being exempt from the debts of the corporation, that is to say, from their own debts, is a franchise, which does not exist unless the legislature has conferred it. It is true that it is the general doctrine that when the legislature creates a corporation it thereby, by implication, confers this franchise. But, as we pointed out, this implication could not arise in the case of the California corporation, since the legislature of California never had the power to confer such a franchise, but was always prohibited from so doing by the constitution of California. Certainly this franchise was not conferred by any of the acts of Congress known as the Pacific Railroad acts. If, therefore, this franchise was neither conferred by the legislature of California nor by the Congress of the United States, by whom has it been conferred? The cold answer is by the Federal judiciary alone. While we expected the affirmance of this judgment, we did not expect that the court would be unanimous, and least of all did we expect that its opinion would be written by Mr. Justice Harlan; though if anything could impair our confidence in our previous view of this case, it would be the fact that the final authoritative opinion in the case is writien by him. It is at least some satisfaction to feel that the case of the Government was not lost by any lack of zeal, learning, or ability in presenting it. It was ably organized and presented in the United States courts below by Hon. L. D. McKisick, of California; and it was ably briefed and argued at Washington by Hon. Holmes Conrad, Solicitor-General, and by Hon. J. M. Dickinson, Assistant Attorney-General.

TRIAL BY NEWSPAPER IN THE STANFORD CASE. - One of the characterteristic California features of this litigation was that it was collaterally tried in the newspapers. Efforts were made, without stint, to draw the Stanford University into the case by saying that the success of this litigation against the Stanford Estate would destroy that University. One newspaper went so far as to publish- and of course the others republished - the statement that Mrs. Stanford would