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whatever labor and means were necessary to discharge the obligation then resting upon the city to keep its streets in a condition to be safely traveled. It is not like the case where an individual is bound by a private act under which he derives a benefit or by a certain tenure to keep a road or bridge in repair, nor like the case of turnpike companies or other private corporations charged with the performance of certain duties by the Acts under which they are incorporated. In such cases the duty is perfect and binding at all times, and its neglect is followed by this responsibility, because it is founded on a valuable consideration or made the condition of the grant. Such being the nature of the duty required, and such being the character of the ordinance in question, we are of the opinion that the only liability resting upon the property owner is that which the ordinance itself imposes, viz: the prescribed fine or penalty for each neglect, and the cost of removal in every instance of his refusal or neglect. By enforcing these, every object the ordinance was intended to accomplish will be attained. The liability of the parties upon whom it operates extends no further, and against them an action like this cannot be maintained."

I know of no one else who could possibly be held responsible for this injury except those already mentioned, viz.: the occupier of the abutting property; the Board of Police Commissioners, and the City of Baltimore. Our Court of Appeals has determined, it seems to me, to free everyone from responsibility who might by any possibility be held liable for this injury.

Perhaps Maryland jurisprudence is not the only system lacking in a method to fix the penalty of such an injury beyond that of the payment of a small fine, and which does not allow a recovery for the actual injury sustained against the occupier of the abutting property. This condition of the law has existed and was known to the Legislatures since 1840, and no act has been passed which in any way seeks to remedy this loophole in the law. I. WM. SCHIMMEL,

BALTIMORE, MD.

THE LAWYER ON THE FRONTIER.

The frontier is no more. Retreating timidly before the vanguard of civilization, shrinking each year to narrower and narrower confines, the frontier finally disappeared, absorbed as it was from all sides at once. Today-yes, in fact, for thirty years-the frontier has ceased to exist. All of which makes just so much more interesting the institutions of the frontier, and none more interesting than "The Lawyer on the Frontier."

The title, "The Lawyer on the Frontier," has been objected to as a misnomer, because the lawyer appears only after the frontier stage has been passed through and the more intensive civilization has rooted itself into a region. Seeing that the lawyer does not enter the frontier with the surveyor, the hunter, the trapper, or the half-hunter halffarmer type, but only after all of these have been pushed out by the fixed and stationary agricultural settlers, it would be more proper to call this discussion "The Lawyer on His Frontier," for it is the lawyer's frontier that is to be treated. Beginning with the missionary and the trapper, and ending with the farmer and the manufacturer, one type more complex than the last pushed out the other. With the coming of the farmer, hunting became unprofitable; so the hunter pushed out still farther on the frontier. This movement has been going on from the settlement of this country in 1607 until in the eighties of the past century, when the frontier areas advancing from the Pacific and Atlantic Coasts met in the Rocky Mountains. Today, the frontier, as far as the United States is concerned, is a thing of the past, though there are a few isolated spots which to all purposes are still in the frontier stage.

It is elemental that wherever people come in contact with one another, there is need of law and order, the number of

laws and restraints accumulating with the increase in population. So that, even before the advent of the lawyer, the frontier had need for law. The pre-lawyer, pre-government, pre-law stage is everywhere the same. The frontier with its absence of government and law soon finds that it must create for its self-protection a certain degree of order, this often-yes, usually-without the express authority or sanction of the sovereign government. Frontier history is filled with accounts of frontier justice of a community, of a family, yes, of a few individuals, carrying out what to them was "law." As there were no rules or laws to act upon, each case was settled upon its merits. Anything like the technicalities of the present practice was then impossible. Had the frontiersmen not taken upon themselves, extra-legally, to be sure, the functions of government, most of the crimes would have gone unpunished. Horse-stealing was the most common crime on the frontier. As the horses roamed about loose, the crime was easily accomplished, and was accordingly just as severely punished, usually by hanging. A friend told me that his grandparent "blew off" the head of a drunken lumberman who attempted to cleave his head with an axe. This was at the time Wisconsin was still a territory. The arm of the law did not reach far then. There was no court, no sheriff. Instead, the neighboring farmers met, ascertained the facts and let the matter rest on the settler's promising to furnish the pine coffin and bury the lumber-jack. Nothing else was ever done by any more authorized individuals. This irregular procedure was the frontier makeshift for courts and law.

Every frontier has the same history: whenever the tentacles of the central government cannot reach and exert its force by regularly created agencies, the settlers are compelled, for self-protection, to take upon themselves the duties and responsibilities of government. Where the government fails to rule, the citizen will rule. This is lynch

law. But you will say we have lynch law today. Yes, but such regions so out of the grasp and control of the government that lynch law prevails, are frontier areas for the time being. A lynching territory is essentially a temporary frontier, being outside the pale of law. There is a distinction to be kept in mind in regard to lynching today, namely, that the acts of the citizens themselves have created this temporary unnatural frontier by illegally ousting the existing government. Lynch law as a frontier law is absolutely necessary. It is self-protection. Lynch law today is justified by some who maintain that the government has neglected to govern when it fails to punish many atrocious crimes. The people become impatient with the technical and too regular practice of our courts, confusing occasional failure of justice with an absence of justice. Because the government seems to have failed, the people unite irregularly to accomplish what they feel the government should have done. Justifiable lynch law can exist only on the frontier. With the advent of the lawyer it must disappear, for he looks with abhorrence on all forms of swift and certain, though dangerous and irregular, justice.

Following very closely on lynch law, and in many cases. existing along with it, a court system gradually developed, though for some time still without the presence of the lawyer. The first judges of Herkimer Common Please (1793), Oneida, New York, were three "fair-minded, intelligent and upright laymen."" At this time we have the territorial judge, appointed by the Governor or some military leader. Judge Reaume, for example, is said to have been the first judge in Wisconsin, holding the position from 1803 till after the War of 1812. He was commissioned by Governor Harrison over what was then Indian Territory. Judge Reaume is typical of the legal ability exhibited or

1 Bacon, Bar of Oneida, page 9.

2 Thwaites, R., Stories of Badger State, 106-9.

not exhibited on the frontier, and therefore warrants some attention. We are assured that Judge Reaume owned a volume of Blackstone, but this may well be doubted if we are to judge from his decisions. He understood and applied the "Law of Paris," and based his decisions on "right" regardless of the technicalities of the law. How he applied the Common Law of Blackstone, the Civil Law of Paris, and the principles of "right and wrong," all at the same time, is rather difficult to understand. He used few writs, warrants or subpoenas; his large jack-knife, sent by a special messenger, served as a more effective substitute in bringing witnesses and parties to court. He married and divorced people; he drew up contracts and registered wills; he was judge and he was jury; in fact, he was the judicial system of the territory, continuing to hold office because no one was sent to succeed him. It is more than a tradition that Judge Reaume often made both parties pay the fine, that a bottle of whisky would win a case, and that he once reversed himself on being presented with a teapot. Whether true or not, these stories are indicative of the crude form the frontier court took, and they illustrate that principles of right and wrong controlled rather than any system of jurisprudence. With the lawyer came the technicalities of the law, though even in the first decade of his residence on the frontier, justice still depended on common-sense principles rather than on any finespun distinctions.

After the hunter and trapper had left a region, at the time that the half-farmer half-hunter type was leaving and the permanent more intensive farmer entered the frontier, the lawyer appeared. When the frontier reached the stage where well established settlements were made, it was necessary for law and the lawyer to step in.

The position of the lawyer was for some time equivocal. The people on the frontier were a plain, simple straightforward, common-sense folk, looking to the courts for a "justice" which would accord with their own ideas of moral

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