struggling to make a three years' course a sine qua non to the profession of the healing art, the legal profession has reduced in effect its course to two years. It is to be hoped that a reaction will take place, and it in the hope of assisting in such a reaction that this article is written.

Improvement in legal education can be brought about in two ways-first, by the courts; second, by the law school, and still better, by both co-operating. Let the courts, who are responsible morally for the character of their officers, fix inflexibly a three years' rule of studentship, applicable alike to law school student and office student, and let them raise the character of their examinations, not only final but preliminary, where preliminary examinations exist, and where they do not exist establish them and require all students to pass both examinations. This, it would seem, could be easily enough done; there is really no reason which should stay, or should be expected to stay, the hands of the judges in reforms of this character. There is some difficulty when we come to the part to be borne by the law school; nevertheless, the difficulty is not insuperable. Let the law school fix its term at not less than three years, and when the expression three years is used we mean that that should be the term required for the ordinary course of study required of all students who are to receive diplomas; it should not include any of the post graduate courses of study. Here the objection is made that the professors are, very commonly, compensated either by or in proportion to, the fees received from students, and that, unless there were some immediate tangible (i. e., pecuniary or time-saving advantage) to be gained, many young men who otherwise would come to the law school would stay away, and the revenues of the professors or of the school would fall off. This is probably true, but the argument is worthless except upon the assumption that the professors work for hire only and are willing to sacrifice thoroughness of work to pecuniary recompense, and we would be sorry to think so meanly of men sufficiently learned to fill chairs of legal instruction as to think that money was the all in all to them; the laborer is worthy of his hire, beyond all question, and the hire ought to be liberal, but not the man who thinks of his hire only or mainly when the labor is of so farreaching, so important, a character as that of a law professorship.

As to institutions in which the professors are salaried, this objection takes another shape, and it may be said the school cannot exist if attended by so few students. In that case, perhaps the school had better not exist. It is not necessary that there should be a very great number of law schools, and there will always be enough earnest students-men desiring the great aid to be derived from really learned professors-to support a sufficient number of realiy good schools. By increasing its term, especially if the diploma be not permitted to give the right of admission to the bar, the school will hold itself out no longer as a royal road, or, rather, a short cut, to green pastures of practice, attracting quite as many unworthy as worthy students, but as a place of higher instruction in the science of law, and to carry out this idea it should either insist on an entrance examination on legal rudiments, or it should give to its students a drill therein before permitting them to attend the lectures of the professors. As a result, the school may have fewer students, but it will send out more thoroughly equipped men-it will deserve better of the community.

Action of the kind suggested on the part of the courts and the law school will, we think, remedy that great evil that we hear so much about-the overcrowding of the profession. The profession is not overcrowded with fit men, but it is overcrowded with men permitted to practice, and every day the distinction between the lawyer and the member of the bar is exemplified; and the distinction is apparent to lawyers, but not to the outside world. As a result, we often see the plausible and ignorant man acquiring a practice and an outside reputation, whereby his clients suffer much before his weakness is discovered.

The remedy against such overcrowding is not that which the bar of New York attempted to apply about the time when John Jay first began the study of the law, namely, refusing to permit young men to pursue the study of the law and to qualify themselves for practice, but by so raising the standard of attainment requisite for admission, that none but fit men shall be permitted to enter upon the practice of the professionraising the standard, that is, to such a height that, while not beyond the reach of the ordinary educated and industrious man, it shall be such that the fact that it has been passed will carry

with it an assurance to the public that one who has been admitted to the bar is competent, intellectually and morally, to take charge of the interests which clients may be expected to intrust to him. That it is to the very great interest of the public that admission to the bar should carry with it the strongest possible assurance of actual fitness on the part of the person admitted is a remark so evident, so trite, that one hesitates to write it down, but we sometimes lose sight of the fact that such assurance can be given through the combined action of the court and the law schools, and that to do so is a solemn duty which they owe to the public.

HENRY BUDD.

RECENT AMERICAN DECISIONS.

Texas Court of Appeals.

EX PARTE ASIER.

The Texas Act, imposing an occupation tax upon traveling merchants "drummers," or solicitors of trade by sample or otherwise, does not contravene the clause of the Federal Constitution providing for the regulation of commerce between the States by Congress.

Robbins v. Taxing District, 120 U. S. 489, disapproved.

ORIGINAL application for writ of habeas corpus to Court of Appeals.

The opinion states the facts.

John A. Kirlicks, for petitioner.

Assistant Attorney-General Davidson, for the State.

WHITE, P. J.-This is an original application to this court for the writ of habeas corpus, in which it is alleged that the applicant is illegally restrained of his liberty for failure and refusal to pay a fine of $35 imposed upon him by a justice of peace of Harris county, on the charge of pursuing the occupation of a commercial traveler, drummer, or solicitor of trade by sample, without having paid the occupation tax prescribed by law on said occupation.

the

It is admitted that applicant is a citizen of Louisiana, and

that he did pursue such occupation in Harris county, State of Texas, without having paid said occupation tax. It is admitted that the law has been violated, as charged. But it is alleged that the statute law of the State of Texas, under which petitioner was tried and is restrained in his liberty, is unconstitutional and void, in that it is in violation of, repugnant to, and contravenes the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States. Thus it will be seen that a direct attack is made upon the constitutionality of our State law which regulates the matter, and the question of its constitutionality is the only one to be determined in this proceeding. We find the statute complained of contained in chapter 17, Gen. Laws Called Sess. 17th Leg. pp. 18, 19, et seq, and the particular provision attacked, which is in part an amendment to article 4665, Rev. St., reads as follows, viz. :

"From every commercial traveler, drummer, salesman, or solicitor of trade by sample or otherwise, an annual occupation tax of $35, payable in advance, provided, that the tax herein required to be paid by such commercial traveler, drummer, salesman, or solicitor, shall be paid to the comptroller of public accounts, whose receipts, under seal, shall be evidence of the payment of such tax; and provided, further, that no county, city, or town shall levy or collect any occupation tax upon such commercial traveler, drummer, salesman, or solicitor: provided, that nothing herein contained shall apply to any one soliciting subscriptions for religious, literary, or historical books or maps, or to persons soliciting for nurseries, newspapers, and gravestones: provided, further, that every commercial traveler, drummer, salesman, or solicitor of trade shall, on demand of the taxcollector of any county of the State, or of any peace officer of said county, exhibit to such officer the comptroller's receipt above mentioned; and every commercial traveler, drummer, salesman, or solicitor of trade who shall fail or refuse to exhibit said receipt to such officer on demand by him shall be deemed guilty of misdemeanor, and fined in a sum not less than $25 nor more than $100."

This is a general law, and an infraction of its provisions is expressly declared to be a misdemeanor punishable by fine. Another of our general statutes provides that in misdemeanor

cases, where a party has been legally tried and fined, he may be imprisoned in the county jail until said fine and costs are paid; so that, if the statute in question be constitutional, a party convicted for its violation may suffer conjointly both fine aud imprisonment.

It is urgently contended that this statute is in conflict with article i, § 8, subd. 3, Const. U. S., which declares that Congress shall have the power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes;" and we are most confidently cited by counsel for applicant, in support of this position, to the case of Robbins v. Taxing District Shelby Co. (recently decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, March 7, 1887), in which it was, in substance, held that "a statute imposing a license tax upon drummers and others selling by sample within a certain taxing district is a regulation of interstate commerce, and therefore unconstitutional as applied to citizens of other States."

We are free to admit that a majority of the court, in that case, so held the law to be. We are free to admit that, if the decision of the majority be correct, it settles the law of this case in favor of the position assumed for applicant. We are further free to admit that in all cases involving clearly and unquestionably the constitutionality and validity of State laws with reference to provisions of the Constitution of the United States, the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, clearly, certainly, and unequivocally expressed upon those questions, should and ought to be binding upon the State courts, because we fully recognize that "it is essential to the protection of the national jurisdiction, and to prevent collision between the State and National authority, that the final decision upon all questions arising in regard thereto should rest with the courts of the Union." Cooley, Const. Lim. (5th ed.) p. 16. But such decisions, no more than the decisions of the State courts, are or should be binding upon the latter, if in themselves unwarranted assumptions of constitutional authority-invocations of the Federal power, where such power does not and was never intended to apply and operate; and, moreover, where said decisions are directly in conflict with well-adjudicated cases of the same court, which are not overruled, and which, in addition to their equal VOL. XXXVI.-11