The effect of these laws has been two fold: Ist. They have made the local authorities more representative; and 2d. They have largely increased the power of final decision possessed by the local authorities. The local authorities are more representative of the population both because the suffrage has been widened and because the people now control the executive as well as the deliberative organs in the local government system. Local suffrage is now practically universal manhood suffrage, and is no longer dependent on property qualifications. To vote for members of local councils it is now necessary simply to show some local interest, which is obtained by residence or payment of direct taxes in the locality. A The real discretionary executive organs of the localities are now elective. law of 1882 made the mayors of the communes the choice of the elected municipal councils. They had been the appointees of the central government; and even now may be dismissed by it. A law of 1871 (the organic law of the department) transferred most of the executive powers of the Prefect, relative to the local affairs of the Department, to a popular body called the Departmental Commission, which is elected by the elected General Council. While the laws were thus putting into the hands of the people the power of determining the personnel of their local authorities, they were at the same time greatly enlarging the sphere of local action of the same authorities. The law of 1866, which began this period of decentralization, opened to the General Councils a wide sphere of final action, which was enlarged by the law of 1871, now in force; and the Communes Act of 1884 went still further for the communes both rural and urban. The result of these laws is that the local municipal corporations, ie., the departments, towns and cities have at the present time almost absolute control over their own affairs. In all cases do they have the sole power of initiation; in most cases, that of final decision. The only cases when resolutions of a local authority on a local matter require the approval of the central government are when their execution requires the incurring of large debts or the imposition of heavy taxes. The object of this limitation on their powers is to prevent extravagance on their part, which in all countries at the present time seems to be the peculiar curse of local governments. But while the local authorities are in France almost supreme in purely local matters, when they act as agents of the central government they must in most cases look to it for approval. That is, when the law of the land has enacted that a given branch of central administration shall be attended to by a local organ (e. g., the judicial administration whose expenses are largely defrayed by the localities) it has reserved to the central administration the power to force the local organs to do their duty. The state must not be allowed to suffer through the negligence of a locality. This power which the central administration has over the actions of the local bodies is called the tutelle administrativeadministrative guardianship. The name is now misleading. Originally framed with the idea of protecting the localities against their own unwisdom, it is now for the most part simply a defensive weapon by which the central government protects the state against the locality rather than the locality against itself. It is seldom made use of to limit the action of local bodies on purely local matters. The result of this decentralization, gradually accomplished through so long a period, is to call thousands of Frenchmen elected by their neighbors into the administration. They are for the most part unpaid and serve for short terms. The growth of a professional bureaucratic class in local matters is thus made impossible, and the people, instead of being governed, learn to govern themselves. Nor is this condition of local autonomy made nugatory as the American local autonomy so often is by the pernicious custom of special and local legislation. Undoubtedly the French legislature may, if it wishes, pass such legislation. But the whole current of public opinion is against the exercise by the legislature of administrative powers. The apparent local autonomy is a real local autonomy; it is more real than is ours. Nowhere in France do we find a city being governed as is New York, by the legisla ture. A system of local government which, like the French, depends so largely upon non-professional or lay officers which, like the French, grants its local authorities such a wide field of action, furnishes to its citizens an every-day, practical school of politics which must in the end teach them to govern not only their local matters, but also their national affairs. England did not develop her system of national self-government until she had for many years possessed a system of local self government. The wisdom and statesmanship of the members of Parliament were the result of long training in public matters in the quarter and petty sessions of the justices of the peace. France in 1789 unfortunately attempted to erect the superstructure before the foundation was laid. The result has been seen in the frequent ruin of the edifice of government, shocked and dejected by the spectacle, the spectator has failed to observe that through all this century faithful workmen have been patiently laying the foundation for constitutional government. Is it too much to believe that the foundation is now sufficiently strong? May we not hope that the system of local self-government has had sufficient influence to to produce national self government? May we not expect to find among the thousands of general and municipal councillors -called into service by the reforms described a few hundreds experienced enough, wise enough and public spirited enough to form a Chamber of Deputies which shall allow France to advance through constitutional evolution rather than through anarchical revolution? COLUMBIA LAW TIMES. FOUNDED BY PAUL K. AMES AND T. GOLD FROST. PUBLISHED MONTHLY DURING THE COLLEGIATE YEAR Subscription, $2.50 per year. Single Number 35 cents. EDITORS: WILLARD C. HUMPHREYS. JOHN N. POMEROY Louis F. Hyde, E. M. White, CORRESPONDENTS: John L. Quackenbush, R. A. Russell, Harvard Law School. University of Penn. Law School. University of Michigan Law School. Vanderbilt University Law School. Illinois Wesleyan Law School. It The LAW TIMES will continue in future to be edited and managed upon substantially the same plan and with the same ends as have secured for it such wellearned distinction during the past. will have in mind the interest of the students of the Schools both of Law and of Political Science, and, in the selection of its leading articles, will endeavor to serve the welfare of all. The lecture notes, both Junior and Middle Class, will be carefully and fully taken in the class room by the editors, and, before publication, will be revised by the respective professors. Their accuracy is thus doubly assured, and they may with entire confidence be relied upon by the students as containing an adequate transcript of all that it is essential for them to preserve in connection with their text-book work. The reviews of recently published books, to which special attention will this year be devoted, are not to be considered as advertisements or "puffs," but will be well considered expressions of the editors' views concerning the merit of the works of which they treat. That such opinions. will in all instances be correct, it were vanity to claim; that they will, at any rate, be honestly independent, is assured. The columns devoted to Clippings and Legal Antiquites, will be selected with discrimination from a large number of exchanges, and will be chosen, as far as practicable, with a view to their appropriateness to the subject of study in the Law School from month to month. The editorials will be written upon topics of general er local interest to the students of the college, and it will be the endeavor of the editors to render them a representation of the sentiment of the school, rather than an expression of their personal opinions. The students are earnestly requested, therefore, to lend, not only their pecuniary support, but their sympathetic coöperation in contributing to the success of a journal which reflects credit upon the school to which they belong. We have just time to pause for a moment before sending our sheets to press, to congratulate the college upon the wise selection of the Trustees in the appointment of Mr. Low to the presidency. The writer feels that his position as an alumnus of the School of Arts and a student of the Schools of Law and Politi cal Science, justifies him in adding his tribute of praise to the general expression of pleasure and approval on the part of the students of the various schools, and is confident that whatever he might say in extending a hearty welcome and assurance of loyalty to our new president, would be regarded as but voicing the sentiment of the whole University. Mr. Low was graduated from Columbia in 1870. During the whole of his college course he was honorably distinguished by his ability and industry, and was loved and admired by all his class, of which he stood at the head. Of his career since he left college it is unnecessary to speak in this place; his successful activity as a business man, his spotless record and unprecedented popularity as Mayor of Brooklyn, his finished scholarship as a writer, his pleasing eloquence as an orator, his upright fearlessness as a man, and refined dignity as a gentleman, all these, his qualities, are too familiar to need recalling, too generally recognized to require commendation. Owing to the fact that the Law School did not open this year until unusually late, and that, therefore, recitations had been going on but ten days before most of the substance of our present issue had to be sent to press, we have delayed the publication of our first "questions" on the Law School work until the November number, where they will appear as promised in our prospectus. Owing to changes in his business plans for the winter, Mr. G. F. Warren, Jr., has severed his connection with the LAW TIMES. The journal will be managed by Mr. Willard C. Humphreys. We desire to call the attention of the incoming class to a feature of our school which is not as widely appreciated by students as it should be. We refer to the School of Political Science. This school offers no less than thirty courses of lectures, occupying each from one to four hours per week, all of which are open to students of the law school on payment of a trifling matriculation fee. These courses cover nearly the whole ground of History and Political Science, subjects which now play the most important part in the college curriculum, and which, in those colleges where the "elective" system prevails, are decidedly the most popular among the students. Those of us who have not had the advantage of a college course can thus cover the most important part of the ground at the cost of a few extra hours per week. This range of subjects is more than interesting to the law student; it is extremely practical. No lawyer can well dispense with some knowledge of Constitutional and International Law, Public and Private. Moreover, a few ideas on Roman law are of great use in throwing light on many parts of the English law which show traces of Roman origin; and so on all through the list. These facts are so well appreciated abroad that in English universities these studies have an equal place in the curriculum with the common law; and in every well-equipped American law school opportunities are given similar to those offered here, though nowhere else in this country in so great abundance. Moreover, there is a limit to the amount of law that the student, especially one not used to dealing with dry abstractions, can assimilate in a day. The greatest of American lawyers, Rufus Choate, places this limit at four hours, and recommends strongly that the rest of the day be devoted to the reading of history and political science. Judge Cooley, in the introduction to his edition of Blackstone, gives much the same advice. The opinions of men like these do not need to be bolstered up by arguments. CORRESPONDENCE. YALE LAW SCHOOL, NEW HAVEN, Oct. 10th, 1889. To the Editors of the Columbia Law Times: The Green Bag for June has told its readers-doubtless some of your readers also-both what our school here has been and what it now is. There are many things in that flattering, though modest sketch to which we might justly "point with pride," such for instance, as refer to the high and even highest professional standing of many graduates, or the acknowledged ability of our Professors and their successful methods of teaching. Indeed, the professors themselves might well propose their printed portraits as illustrating in a double sense the fine features of the Yale system. "Comparisons are odious," we say, but comparing our law school with itself is quite another matter. It is not the tradition here to be standing still. Yet this fall the advance is either more or less more noticeable than is usual from year to year. You know, of course, that the Hon. Edward J. Phelps, late Minister to England, assumes again all the duties of his professorship, beginning with the winter term. The Junior class will also be under his instruction, although he has more particularly consented to take up a course in Equity-perhaps also Evidence-with the Seniors. At any rate it is assured that he will devote himself even more fully to the work of the school than he had done hitherto. I do not doubt that the return of Professor Phelps will give a great impulse to the school. I do not doubt, also, that the school can, and will, make the most of his coming, which, in view of increasing numbers and the firm establishment of graduate M. L. and D. C. L. courses, is now quite opportune. Our developments, however, has always been of a solid and substantial kind, a building up from, and upon the basis of the past, the changes made being those that necessarily accompany a healthy growth. This notable accession to our Faculty, therefore, calls for no reconstruction of policy, but is looked upon rather as a long advance in the direction of present progress. It is moreover, no injustice to the late Minister, to say that he will not entirely eclipse his colleagues. Our other Professors are also "stars,"-to use a word that will continue, but not enforce the figure. At the risk of making this correspondence look like a catalogue, I will enumerate. We have Dean Wayland, who is perhaps best known by his labors in behalf of Prison Reform; Judge Robinson, publisher of a standard work on Elementary Law, and whose exhaustive treatise on Patents is now in press; Professor Baldwin, a prominent member of |