Señor Jose Eugene E. Bernal, the well-known Cuban lawyer, and one of the founders of the automonist party, is dead.

Written Prescriptive Constitutions," published in the March number of the Harvard Law' Review, are, to say the least, significant. Speaking of interstate commerce, he says : —

Alexander McCue, Assistant Treasurer of the United States, died at Brooklyn, N. Y., on April 2. He was born at Metamora, Mexico, in 1826, and graduated from Columbia College in 1845. Three years later he was admitted to the bar, and began his practice in Brooklyn. In 1861, 1862, 1867, and 1868 he was corporation counsel for that city, and from 1870 until 1885 was one of the judges of the City Court. The latter position he resigned when President Cleveland tendered him the appointment of Solicitor of the United States Treasury at Washington. On the death of Professor Baird, in 1887, the President gave to Judge McCue the vacant position of United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries.

'• It may be that by and by the federal legislature, surveying the field of interstate commerce, and taking note how State commerce encroaches upon and in termingles with it, crowding it in the same vehicles on the same roads, sharing with it in the same ex penses, the rates which are imposed on the one neces sarily affecting the rates that can be accepted on the other, and being handled at the same time by the same hands, under the same official control, will come to the conclusion that a separate regulation of State commerce must necessarily be to some extent at least, and may be to a large extent, incon sistent with complete federal regulation of the com merce that is interstate. Should that conclusion be reached, the federal legislature is not unlikely to take to itself complete regulation of the whole." What will our railroad corporations say to this?

REVIEWS. The Chicago Law Times for April contains an Johns Hopkins University Studies, seventh admirable portrait of William Blackstone accom series, IV. — This last number of this interesting panied by a sketch of his life. "The Woman series is a sketch of the Municipal History of Lawyer," by Dr. Louis Frank, is continued; the New Orleans," by William W. Howe. Beginning " Blair Amendment to the Federal Constitution" with the foundation of the city, in 17 18, the writer is discussed by Charles B. Waite. and there is an follows its history through the French and Spanish interesting paper on " The Death of Young Harry regimes until 1803, when Louisiana was ceded to Vane," by Judge Elliott Anthony. The Law the United States, and from that date up to the Times is certainly one of the most readable of our present time. A curious experiment in city af -exchanges, and is always heartily welcomed. fairs was attempted in 1836, when the territory of New Orleans was divided into three separate municipalities, each having a distinct government We have received an able and exhaustive paper with many independent powers, yet with a Mayor on Legislative Control over Private Corpora and General Council, with a certain superior au dons," by T. Gold Frost, LL.B., of the Minne thority. It was the idea of local self-government apolis Bar. The same paper is published in the pushed to an extreme. It existed for sixteen years, March number of the Columbia Law Times. and during its existence many important public improvements were made. The charter of 1870, vesting the control of the To the March number of the Chicago Law city's affairs in the Mayor and seven Administra tors, is one worthy of study by the advocates of Journal Dr. H. N. Moyer contributes an interest reform in municipal government. The plan seems ing paper on the " .Relation of Insanity to Crime," in which he advances the two propositions : first, to have worked admirably in New Orleans, satisfy "that habitual criminals are moral imbeciles; sec ing every one but the politicians. ond, that the scale of punishments now in vogue is not the best plan of dealing with crime." "The moral imbecile," he says, " cannot refrain The following remarks of Hon. Thomas M. Cooley in a paper on the " Comparative Merits of from crime, and is therefore not deterred by pun