The Supreme Court of Maine. making qualities of the cows that fed on the banks of the stream above the dam. There seemed to be after a while an end to the questions about the cows; and at the dinnertable the Judge called the counsel to him and inquired of them if the subject had been exhausted. They replied that it was. Then said the Judge: "I guess you have overlooked another important branch of inquiry — the effect of this grass upon bulls." As would be expected of a judge of his ability and individuality, his legal style and character are impressed with unmistakable distinctness upon his written opinions. Some of them are admirable specimens of that close and technical reasoning for which he had an uncommon aptitude, and which he knew so well how to use when occasion required. If at times he seemed to be a critic, it was because he was a critic for conscience' sake. He was a razor, as has been said of another, to keep us clean, — not a lancet to bleed us. Those who were in full practice before him will hardly be prepared, however, to believe that he dissented very rarely; much less often, by far, than his genial and ami able associate, Judge Kent. An examina tion of his opinions and the reported cases discloses such to be the fact, beginning with his first opinion, Gilbert v. Curtis, 37 Maine, 48, and ending with his last, Crocker v. Pierce, 61 Maine, 58. His opinions average about twelve per annum. A reference to some of them may interest the reader. He thus begins in State v. Lull, 37 Maine, page 248 : " It is contended that the witness, the owner of the goods alleged to have been stolen, should first have stated what kind of goods were taken, or given some descrip tion tending to identify the same, before the goods were exhibited to him. This proposition assumes that every merchant or trader must necessarily know, and be able to state from memory, the amount and de scription of every article kept in his store,
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and default thereof, to be the proper victim of plunder and robbery. We think that few merchants would subscribe to such a doc trine, or if they did so, that the principal item in their balance-sheets might be that of profit and loss; whereas we can readily perceive, and daily experience proves, that a person may identify property as belong ing to himself from inspection, which other wise might have escaped his recollection." In Kendrick v. Crowell, 38 Maine, 42, the defendants were sued on a note given to a town treasurer in the settlement of a liquor fine. The defendants claimed that the note was void as being without a legal considera tion, and the jury were so instructed and so gave their verdict. The plaintiff excepted. In his opinion sustaining the verdict, the Judge pointedly says : " The object of the law is to punish its violation; and the mode specially provided is by the actual payment of the fine, to be enforced by immediate imprisonment until its payment, etc. The object of our statute was not to raise a public revenue, or to put money into the pockets of private individuals; but was what its title imports, 'An Act to restrict the sale of intoxicating drinks.' And how to restrict? Certainly not by permitting per sons to violate the law on credit, or to transact such business on borrowed capital. Such would be the result, if the note in suit were held to be valid. If a party in terested have the right to take a note with surety, he has also an equal right to receive it without security; and let it once be under stood that such judgments or claims can be so easily and readily satisfied, and the law to a large class of traffickers in intoxicating drinks would be shorn of half its terrors. In this case, as between the parties, 'potior est conditio defendentis .' " Upon a question of pleading he says, in Penley v. Whitney, 48 Maine, 352, "And we are not disposed, at this late day, without the aid of legislation, to obliterate so many legal monuments of the law, to avoid defects in the declaration
