bound in law to pay, and in circumstances implying that he is paying it voluntarily to close the transaction, he cannot recover it; but if he pays it under the compulsion of urgent and pressing necessity or of seizure, actual or threatened, of his goods, he can recover it as money had and received. Held, on the evidence, that (1) plaintiff had not paid under a mistake; (2) he had paid, not voluntarily, but under the pressure of seizure of his goods, and was entitled to recover the tolls which he had paid. Maskell v. Horner, 113 L. T. 126. (Eng.)

SALES-BREACH OF WARRANTY-MEASURE OF DAMAGES.-The measure of damages applicable to actions for fraud in inducing sales of personal property, which allows recovery of the difference between the purchase price and the actual value, does not apply to an action for breach of an express warranty. In an action for the breach of an express warranty of a draft-inducing apparatus, where defendant offered no evidence as to the cost of making the apparatus conform to the warranty, and objected to evidence on that issue offered by plaintiff, which evidence showed that such cost would exceed the damages allowed defendant by the jury, and defendant's only theory as to the measure of damages was the erroneous one that it was the difference between the value if it had been as warranted and the actual value. Sturtevant v. Champion Fibre Co. 232 Fed. 163.

SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE-CONTRACTS RELATING TO PERSONAL PROPERTY.— Although equity will decree specific performance of a contract for the sale of personal property in certain exceptional cases, a petition alleging a contract for the sale of a saloon and restaurant at a fixed price, part payment of the agreed price, agreement for subsequent payments and a repudiation of the contract by the defendant and demanding an accounting, did not state a case entitling the plaintiff to equitable relief by specific performance, he having an adequate remedy at law. Kocurek v. Matychowiak. 185 S. W. 749. (Mo.)

VENDOR AND PURCHASER-SALE IN GROSS-DEFICIENCY.-Upon a sale of land in gross, in the absence of representations as to acreage, a deficiency of 170 acres in a tract supposed to contain 550 acres will not entitle the purchaser to an abatement from the price. Turner v. Vann. 87 S. E. 985. (N. C.)

THE DOCKET.

THE STRUGGLE for the Presidential Chair for the next four years is over and the serenity of the American mind has not been disturbed even in the slightest degree. THE DOCKET was of voting age during the great contest of 1876 for the Presidency, when the minority candidate was declared elected by a single vote, after a great trial before an historic tribunal. He remembers the feverish excitement during the days when the result was in doubt and how another civil war was averted only through the American fondness for arbitration rather than force. But in the three or four days last month when the people were waiting for the official count there was none of the anxiety and the heat of 1876. The very voters who at first thought they were victorious, appeared to care not a snap when their hopes were disappointed. At his club the evening of the election, when it seemed that Mr. Hughes had won, THE DOCKET heard more than one disappointed Democrat console a fellow member with the reflection, "Well it's not so bad after all; for at least we shall have no more Secretaries of State like Bryan and no more Secretaries of the Navy like Daniels." And when the next night it was pretty clear that the President had been re-elected, it was the Republicans that exclaimed: "Thank God for one thing: Berlin will not have its expected illumination to celebrate the defeat of Mr. Wilson." Such a calm and judicial frame of mind at a time when across the seas things are so different can only be explained on the theory that the great mass of the voters of the country were not very much in love with either of the candidates.

PRESIDENT WILSON had alienated a large number of the men who had voted for him four years ago. His "neutral in thought," "too proud to fight,' ""not any concern of ours who brought on the great war" platitudes are utterly abhorrent to a self-respecting citizen. His vacillating Mexican policy was weak and can end in no one knows what or where and his surrender to the railroad employees was a sickening blow to the great principle of arbitration. On the other hand, he had in home politics been almost a progressive and was able to point to a large number of laws which promise great good to the country that he had initiated and in many cases forced through a reluctant Congress. But, when Mr. Justice Hughes was nominated by the Republican convention and endorsed by Colonel Roosevelt and his party, it seemed to THE DOCKET and to the people who thought like him that a new Moses had arisen to lead a bloated and selfish people out of

the morass of contentment and self esteem. Yet never were great expectations so cruelly disappointed. Mr. Hughes had nothing to offer in his campaign speeches but abuse of his opponent and the thread-bare declaration of how much better he would have managed things had he been in Mr. Wilson's place at the time. And very soon Mr. Hughes made a crowning blunder. Journeying to California, one of the Progressive states, he was persuaded by the reactionaries there that if he would stick to them and not recognize the Progressives of that state, they would assure him its electoral vote. So he turned his back on Governor Johnson, the idol of Californians, the friend of Colonel Roosevelt, and the reformer who had rescued the people of that state from the grinding monopoly of the railroads. This was a clear cut notice to the rest of the country that he was not the friend of the Progressives and did not care for their votes. It was a startling announcement, for nearly all of the Progressive party at that time were pinning their faith on him on account of his record as Governor of New York and his endorsement by Theodore Roosevelt. But they saw with dismay their leader betray his cause for the silver promises of votes and at the election' in November they pretty clearly demonstrated to Mr. Hughes that the pieces he received were counterfeit.

IF MR. HUGHES could so readily be hoodwinked by the professional politicians of California as to what the people of California stood for, then surely the Nation has escaped a great peril in refusing to put in the Presidential Chair one so easily deceived as to the opinions of its citizens on the vital questions of the day.

IN a thoughtful and convincing address before the American Bar Association in the summer of 1913, Professor William H. Taft warmly advocated a life tenure of the Judicial office and pointed out the weakness and the evils of an elective Judiciary for short terms. One of the benefits of a life term, he argued, is that it makes the incumbents give their whole mind to their work; to put away all political ambition, to order their household with a view to always being judges and to take vows, so to speak, as to their future conduct. And the ex-President proceeded to point out to that great Congress of the American and Canadian. Bench and bar, a very recent example of what he was so warmly commending: "One of the great debts," he said, "that the American people owe to Mr. Justice Hughes, is the example that he set in the last Presidential election, when the most serious consideration was being given to making him the candidate of the Republican party. He announced his irrevocable determination not to enter the political field because he had assumed the judicial ermine." How little Mr. Taft thought then that the Supreme

Court Judges and the ladies are both alike under the skins, in that you must ask them at least twice to get the answer you want. The high place on which the ex-President placed the Judges of our most august tribunal, only three years ago, is gone forever. The illustrious example he so fondly quoted now tells other judges that they may still nourish an ambition for political place and the great debt which the American people owed to Mr. Justice Hughes is irrevocably canceled by his irrevocable determination to try himself for the highest office in the Nation's gift.

PERHAPS it was not Mr. Hughes' fault that he grew weaker with every month that went by and with every speech that he made. Was it that the magisterial life had unfitted him to cope with the political expert and that during his years on the Supreme bench he had lost the political acumen which he certainly possessed in a marked degree in his two campaigns for the New York Governorship? The habit of safe public utterance on the platform has always been rare in the case of judges who have consented to make public addresses and there are many instances within easy recollection which abundantly confirm the response made in the presence of THE DOCKET to a committee of lawyers that was urging one of the Judges of the United States Supreme Court to deliver an address at a meeting of a State Bar Association: "I have never known a judge open his mouth in public without putting his foot in it. Of this, however, we may be very certain, that it will be a very long time before a political party will repeat its mistake of this year and look to the Supreme Bench for its condidate for President.

THERE was one logical candidate for the Presidency against Mr. Wilson this year-Theodore Roosevelt. The East did not like the President very much and Colonel Roosevelt's stamping ground has always been the great West. There is little doubt that he would have easily shared with his old associate of four years ago, Governor Johnson, his quarter of a million majority of California voters. On the day of his nomination, in his letter thanking Col. Roosevelt for his support, Mr. Hughes declared that the Colonel had sounded the note which should never mean retreat. Alas, that Mr. Hughes did not allow the man who had called the country to its duty to lead the great fight. For Colonel Roosevelt was brave where Mr. Hughes was timid, and could create enthusiasm where Mr. Hughes caused a chill. There was no hedging on the hyphen question on the part of the Colonel, but his friends were nearer able to get a straightforward denunciation of this species of treason from Mr. Hughes. He let the German newspapers claim that they had defeated Roosevelt and nominated him

and that they were going to beat President Wilson because he had not obeyed the orders of the Kaiser and in this very city of St. Louis it was their boast that Roosevelt would not be allowed by the National committee to make a single speech here, because he had offended some of the German voters by his denunciation of the sinking of the Lusitania and the murder of Americans on the high seas. And just at this psychological moment came Mr. Wilson's celebrated telegram to O'Leary: "Please tell your friends, the Hyphenates, for I shall not be able to reach them, that I do not want their votes." These brave words showed that the President was not a coward; and THE DOCKET and his friends felt that they could go to the polls and vote for the President without feeling that they were ashamed of their country. The answer of Mr. Hughes' managers to President Wilson's unmistakable declaration was to substitute on the Missouri electoral ticket in the place of an elector who had died, the President of the German-American Alliance of St. Louis.

BUT here, as in the case of California, Mr. Hughes was again deceived by his advisers. The effort to corral the entire German vote of the land utterly failed, for thousands of loyal Americans, either of German birth or of German ancestry, voted for President Wilson, as the returns abundantly show. And why should it not be so? It must surely be a very small proportion of the people who had left their native land, or whose fathers or grandfathers had, to make their home on this continent and to become citizens of the great Republic that have not transferred their loyalty to the government under which they live and to the land where they have made their homes. The feeling that America is their country exists almost without an exception in the case of all the peoples that are settled on this half of the continent except two-the Irish and the German. No sooner did the Irishman land at New York, than he asked his way to the Naturalization Office, such was his hurry to get on the city police force, or to become an Alderman. For it was to help to "free Old Ireland" that brought him here and it was an "Irish-American" that he called himself. And for a good many years he was able to keep us in hot water with England by frightening our politicians with his vote, especially in the large cities of the East. His scheme was to fight Ireland's battles under the American flag so that if he was beaten he might call on the United States to save him. James Russell Lowell was our Minister to England at the time of one of these small rebellions, and none of our diplomats have put the case better than did this eminent American to the "Irish-Americans" that appealed to him. for protection. "You men," he said, "born in Ireland and naturalized in the United States, misconceive entirely the process through which you have passed in assuming American citizenship.