A GOVERNMENT OF LAW

special plea in a suggestion, "respectfully insisting that the court has no jurisdiction of the subject in controversy," and the minority held that "the court having no authority to proceed with the suit, the judgment afterwards rendered for the plain tiff was erroneous." Let us not exaggerate the apparent danger that existed when we remember that the alien principle set up by the minority failed to triumph by only a

495

single vote. If that vote had been forth coming and a contrary doctrine had been announced in that particular case it would have lived only for a moment. Such an exotic, so contrary to the spirit of our in stitutions, could never have taken root in a land dominated by Anglican law whose basic principles have been slowly maturing dur ing a period of a thousand years. WASHINGTON, D.C., June, 1906.