406
The Green Bag
and object and effect of which is to make the courts responsive to the popular will. We hold, therefore, that in cases of this kind, that is, cases where a question of, doubt arises, such as whether 2 and 2 make four or five, it is our duty to ascertain the will of the people, by considering their most recent expressions through the ballot box and by keeping our ears closely and constantly to the ground (to use a common but forcible expression), and to resolve the doubt accordingly. And while we do not definitely determine the proposition, we think it proper here to say that a doubt will probably always arise when the views of the individual members of this court are in conflict with public sentiment. We say this with the hope that it may be sufficient to deter any misguided citizen in the future from questioning any act of the people or from presuming that he has any con stitutional rights other than those which public sentiment may permit him to enjoy. We have considered this case very carefully and have kept it before us until we could be per fectly sure of our ground. We are satisfied that the will of the people is that 2 and 2 here make five, and we shall so hold. We cannot do other wise without violating the fundamental prin ciple, Vox populi, vox Dei. The judgment of the court below is accordingly affirmed. Affirmed.
the office of Public Trustee to the Prov inces by the appointment of deputies to act in large towns like Manchester and other industrial centres, must be without adequate cause. If Manchester is given a Deputy Public Trustee, says the Law Journal, other towns will demand one, and "the creation of these provincial branches of the department will con stitute a genuine test of the principles of officialism on which the Public Trus tee's office is based." Is the Law Journal out of sympathy with the general principles of a plan which, by its own admission, has proved to meet a public want? If the utility of the department can be increased by the establishment of branches it is hard to see why "devo lution" should be opposed, unless such devolution would clearly lower the efficiency of this useful agency. It may well be that investments can be more advantageously placed and funds better handled by one central office. If so, the evils of decentralization are one thing and those of officialism another.
THE WIDOW'S THIRD ANew York lawyer tells of an English widow who, by reason of certain legal complications, found it necessary to retain a distinguished attorney to represent her in the adjustment of her late husband's estate. "You will," said the attorney, during the course of their consultation, "you will get your third out of the estate." "Oh!" exclaimed the widow, aghast, "how can you say such a thing, with my second scarcely cold in his grave!"
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION OF ESTATES TT seems as if the fear expressed by
- . the London Law Journal, of the
danger of bureaucracy, in extending
AN UNLEARNED JUDGE JOHN DUDLEY, who, for twenty years, 1770 to 1791, was one of the most popular judges of New Hamp shire, was unlearned in the law, and, it is said, his education was so defective that he could not write five consecutive sentences in correct English. Yet so acceptably did he discharge his judicial duties that Chief Justice Parsons, of Massachusetts, one of the most learned of lawyers, said of him, "We may smile at his law and ridicule his language, yet Dudley, take him all in all, was the greatest and best judge I ever knew in New Hampshire." Dudley's career is one of those excep tions to the laws of social and educa tional evolution. His parents were un
