jurisdiction in different districts of the kingdom. Royal courts thus established in every quarter, the subjects would naturally resort to them; and as the administration of justice by the barons was, in the first instance, subject to several limitations, there were endless pretexts for obstructing and reviewing their proceedings. The king's supreme court, originally ambulatory, became, as we have seen, fixed as to the place, and regular in the time of its meeting. Skilful persons, also, were then selected to preside in it; and as the right of hearing appeals was its essential privilege, the final decision of all causes of importance was eventually brought into the Parliament of Paris, or the other courts constructed by the king in different provinces. To this important acquisition to the royal prerogative in the dispensation of justice, was added, as we have remarked, another not less important, viz. its legislative power. The assent of turbulent barons was no longer deemed requisite to the promulgation of a law it was deemed sufficient that the decree was registered by the Parliament of Paris, a body which, though it stood often in the way of the violent exercise of royal power, was manifestly, from its constitution, too much under the royal control not to strengthen the power of the sovereign to a great degree.' pp. 538-541.

We have thus cursorily noticed the various topics of this volume, and can assure the student that he will find Mr. Hoffman's manner very attractive. His arrangement is generally good, his style is flowing, expansive, and lucid, and his sentences seem to have been elaborated with some care. He treats the authors whom he criticises with great candor and liberality, even when he differs from them in opinion. The work contains no marks of hasty, extempore execution, but every where bears the characters of wide reading and careful investigation; and whenever the author touches upon a subject that strictly belongs to the veritable law, as we find it in the treatises, digests, and reports, cases in illustration flow in upon him in abundance. The questions are very distinctly presented and satisfactorily discussed, with an accuracy and fulness of learning, and an case and familiarity with the subject, which give a most commendatory earnest of the forthcoming volumes.

ART. VII.-PETERS'S REPORTS.

Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States, January Term, 1829. By RICHARD PETERS, Counsellor at Law and Reporter of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. Vol. II. Philadelphia. P. H. Nicklin & T. Johnson, 1829. pp. 735. In a former number of our journal we gave a short notice of the first volume of Mr. Peters's Reports. Some faults in his mode of reporting were there pointed out. His second vol

ume, which has since been published, seems to us liable to the same objections which we then advanced. As the mode of reporting, adopted in these volumes, not only renders them very inconvenient to readers, but is also likely to diminish very seriously the value and influence of the decisions of the highest tribunal in the country, we feel it a duty to point out distinctly what appears to us exceptionable in his work. This we shall do the more readily, as the greatest faults of Mr. Peters as a reporter seem to arise, in some respects, from what we consider a false theory on the subject of reporting, and in others from carelesness, and in either case may be corrected.

The labors of reporter, we readily acknowledge, are arduous. To take notes of the speeches of counsel, which are often ill-digested and illogical, minuting down all the authorities which are cited; and afterwards from these notes to give a brief and lucid sketch of the argument, verifying the citations by a reference to books; from a voluminous mass of papers to present a systematic and exact statement of the case, in which without any redundancy nothing shall be omitted; and, finally, to prepare the summary or abstract, which shall present the material points which the court have decided or expressed an opinion upon, the very essence of the case, these altogether require an amount of patience, attention, skill, and legal science, which are probably not generally realized. We should, therefore, readily pass over the little imperfections of a reporter in consideration of the difficulty and extent of his labors, and should not again call the attention of our readers to Mr. Peters's Reports, if we did not believe the defects in them to be essential and glaring.

In our review of the first volume of these reports, we men

tioned as a fault that the statements of the case were often given twice over, first before the argument of the counsel, and again in the opinion of the judge. This is done in several instances in the present volume. The statement given by the reporter is often in very nearly the same words as that presented by the judge. As instances of this error we mention, Bank of the U. States v. Corcoran, p. 121; Van Ness v. Pacard, p. 137; Leroy v. Johnson, p. 186; American Fur Company v. The United States, p. 358; Bank of the United States v. Owens, p. 527; Beatty v. Kurtz, p. 566; English v. Foxall, p. 595. Mr. Peters, it is true, has the sanction of other reporters in the course which he has adopted. But we must persist in considering it as very slovenly to use these vain repetitions, and not tending in any degree to render the cases clear.

Mr. Peters, in this as in the first volume, sometimes, instead of presenting any statement of the case before the argument of the counsel, refers the reader for it to the opinion of the court. This is even worse than giving the statement twice over, as having to turn over the leaves to find the facts or pleadings in the judge's opinion, is inconvenient and very irritating to the reader. The only correct course, it seems to us, in every case in which the argument is given, is to introduce it by stating the case, and to omit the statement in the opinion as far as practicable. This subject may perhaps seem of but little importance, but nothing should be neglected which serves to bring the case easily and expeditiously into the reader's mind.

The statements of cases in this volume are not liable to any great objection, though, perhaps, they are sometimes a little more diffuse than is desirable. The arguments of counsel, too, are usually well prepared, presenting their reasonings and illustrations with sufficient clearness and fulness.

The defects which we have already noticed are comparatively unimportant. It is in the abstracts or summaries of the cases that we find most cause for blame. As the proper preparation of these abstracts is at once the most difficult and the most important of the reporter's duties, we shall be excused for giving it a full consideration.

From an examination of these abstracts we should infer that, instead of endeavoring, from a thorough study of the case, to ascertain the points in controversy, and to present a digest of the substance of the decision, all that the reporter does, is to

read over the opinion of the court, and then extract from it a number of sentences or paragraphs, on what principle of selection it is difficult to say, and place them at the head of the case. These extracts are usually very little changed from the words of the court, and therefore have some connexion with the matters actually in controversy. This system of forming abstracts, produces very much such an effect, as would be made by reducing a map, plan, or figure, by cutting out pieces here and there, and then putting them together like the Chinese puzzle, instead of projecting the whole map with all its proportions upon a smaller scale. The reader finds in the abstract, arguments, observations, and illustrations of the court, learns something of the path which they have been pursuing, but is left entirely at a loss as to the conclusions at which they arrive. After studying a page or two of fine type, his mind is in a painful state of uncertainty as to the points actually decided by the court, and can only be relieved by examining the body of the decision.

In some instances in the reporter's resolute determination to introduce the ipsissima verba of the court into the abstract, he uses forms of expression which, however suitable for a court, appear very strange in the mouth of a reporter. Thus we find in one abstract, the reporter asserting, we should feel not much difficulty in saying,' as if he himself was the oracle of the law. This is, perhaps, merely clumsiness in point of style. But in other instances his fondness for the words of the court, leads him to set down general expressions falling from the judges as established principles, without limiting them to the circumstances of the case under consideration, even where such a limitation was obviously intended by the court. This giving too general an effect to the language of judges, is a frequent error among reporters, but Mr. Peters's peculiar system renders him remarkably prone to it.

Thus far we have only referred to cases in which, though the points decided by the court are not stated in the abstract, some allusion or reference is made to them; but it sometimes happens that nothing is said in the abstract which would induce the most attentive reader to conjecture that the points actually decided were presented by the case. It seems difficult to account for these omissions. It may perhaps be contended that the points which are omitted in the abstract, are of no importance, being merely an affirmation of principles of law

which before were perfectly well settled. It does not seem to us that the omitted points are always of this character. But if they were, the reporter has no discretion to admit them into, or reject them from his summary. In every case reported it is his duty in the abstract to present every point which the court have thought sufficiently important to decide. The reporter ought not to shrink, as Mr. Peters sometimes appears to do, from the labor of presenting the substance of a decision which depends on complicated circumstances.

In order to expose the absurd system on which the abstracts in this volume are prepared, we shall, at the risk of fatiguing our readers a little, examine a few of them.

In Van Ness v. Pacard, p. 137, the decision may be stated as follows. A building two stories high in front, with a cellar of stone or brick, and a brick chimney resting on the stone or brick foundation, and a shed of one story, were erected by a lessee during his term on the land leased to him. These buildings were erected with a view to carry on his business of a dairyman, and for the residence of his family and servants engaged in his said business. The cellar, in which was a spring, was used as a milk cellar; and the utensils of his said business were kept, scalded, washed, and used in the upper part of the house, in which his family resided. The lessee was also a carpenter, and had tools and two apprentices in the house, and a work bench out of doors, and worked in the house at his trade of a carpenter. Held, that the house did not become part of the freehold, and might be rightfully removed by the lessee during the continuance of his lease.-In an action on the case by a lessor against his lessee for removing buildings erected by him during the continuance of the lease, evidence is admissible to show a usage or custom of the place in which the land lies for tenants to make such removals of buildings during their term.-Another point of no great importance is taken notice of in the last paragraph of Mr. Peters's abstract, which follows. We have numbered the paragraphs for the convenience of referring to them. The numbers in brackets at the end of each paragraph are given by the reporter to show the page of the judge's opinion from which he extracted it. 1. Action on the case against the defendant for waste, committed by him while tenant of the plaintiff, the owner of the reversionary interest, by pulling down and removing from the demised premises, a dwelling-house erected thereon, and attached