AND PROFITS.—A stipulation in a mortgage that, upon the institution of foreclosure proceedings, a receiver of the rents and profits may be appointed on the application of the mortgagee, is contrary to the public policy of Oregon, as shown by the statute which provides that a mortgage of real property shall not be deemed a conveyance, so as to enable the mortgagee to recover possession without a foreclosure and sale according to law. Therefore the appointment of a receiver under such a stipulation is void. (Couper v. Shirley [U. S. C. C. of App.] 75 Fed. Rep. 169.)

PUBLIC LANDS

GRANT TO RAILROAD COMPANY.

-The facts that a tract of land is claimed as part of a Mexican grant confirmed by the United States, and that a survey under the authority of the government has included the tract within the limits thereof, exclude such tract from the category of public land, and so from the operation of a grant by congress to a railroad company, although it is ultimately decided, in a proceeding pending at the time of the congressional grant, that the land in question is not within the limits of the Mexican grant. (Southern Pac. R. Co. v. Brown [U. S. C. C. of App.], 75 Fed. Rep. 85.)

RAILROAD COMPANIES-APPOINTMENT OF RECEIVERS.-The appointment of railroad receivers under a bill by a stockholder and bondholder, which makes no mortgagee a party, and which alleges insolvency, and prays merely that the system may be protected from its creditors, and held intact, may,

in the absence of formal objections, be presumed

to be for the common interest; but, until the mortgage bondholder intervene, such receivers stand practically for the corporation itself, with all its rights and powers, subject to such limitations and directions as the court may give. (New England R. Co. v. Carnegie Steel Co. [U. S. C. C. of App.], 75 Fed. Rep. 54.)

REMOVAL OF CAUSES- RECEIVERS OF FEDERAL COURT.— A receiver appointed by a Federal Court has not a right, by virtue of his personal standing as such, to remove from a State to a Federal Court a suit in which he is joined as defendant with a citizen of the State. (Shearing v. Trumbull [U. S. C. C., Colo.], 75 Fed. Rep. 33.)

REMOVAL OF CAUSES SEPARABLE CONTROVERSY. - Where an application is made, under State laws, to condemn a portion of a large tract of land, the whole of which is owned in fee by a defendant, who is a citizen of another State than the applicant's and a small part of which, including some of the land sought to be condemned, has been leased by him to another defendant who is a citizen of the same State as the applicant, there is a separable controversy between the applicant and such first

named defendant as to the land not leased, which can be removed to a Federal Court, on the ground of diverse citizenship. (Sugar Creek, P. B. & P. C. R. Co. v. McKell [U. S. C. C., W. Va.], 73 Fed. Rep. 34.

PARTNERSHIP MORTGAGE OF PARTNER'S INTEREST.-In pursuance of an agreement between M. and S., partners, and T., that S. should sell out his interest to T.. who should thereupon form with M. a new firm, the sale was made, the interest of S. in partnership real estate conveyed to T. by deed describing it as an undivided half of certain land, a mortgage given thereon by T. to S. to secure the purchase money, and thereafter, on the same day, a partnership formed between M. & T., the latter contributing thereto the property thus acquired: Held, that there being no fraud in the transaction, it being known by M. that the property contributed by T. was burdened with such mortgage, and it being recorded, it could not be treated as a mortgage of the interest of T. in the new firm, so as to be deferable to an adjustment of the accounts between M. and T., as partners, or to the debts of the firm of M. and T., though the latter were to a large extent for money used in paying the debts of the old firm. (Beecher v. Stevens [U. S. D. C. Conn.] 75 Fed. Rep. 125.)

Correspondence.

To the Editor of the Albany Law Journal:

I. Can the court of equity make a valid decree in

partition; in an action wherein a trustee holding a legal title as co-tenant has not been made a party, but the beneficiary has been made a party and answered?

II. What rights, if any, vested in purchaser at sale under decree in partition, where a trustee holding legal title as tenant in common to a one-fourth interest was not before the court, but cestui que trust appeared and answered ?

III. Where a sale is made under a decree of partition, and one holding the legal title as co-tenant in common has not been made a party, is such decree and sale void in toto, or void quoad hoc, the cotenant not so made a party?

IV. If void only as to the interest of the co. tenant so not made a party, what is the remedy? Yours truly,

X. Y. Z.

LEGAL TENDER ACTS AND THE GOLD CLAUSE IN CONTRACTS.

To the Editor of the Albany Law Journal:

I write this to call attention to some errors in the article on this subject appearing on page 216 of volume 54, ALBANY LAW JOURNAL. The greatest

however, that Judge Landon dissented from the opinion of his four associates on the bench, and held that the law was constitutional. The majority of the Court of Appeals condemned the legislation on two grounds: First, because a minority of the common council is not a city authority within the meaning of the provision of the Constitution which permits the power of appointing officers to be exercised by cities; and, secondly, because the scheme of appointment is so intimately connected with the remainder of the act that no portion of it can be upheld.

An important change in the outlook for the adoption of the proposed new international rule of the road at sea has recently taken place as a result of action by the British board of trade. The Liverpool Steamship Owners' Association some time ago entered strong protests against the adoption of the fog signals contained in the proposed new regulations. But the board of trade now overrules these objections.

The chief but not the only objections set forth to the new regulations formulated and recommended by the Washington conference of 1889, were directed against two new sound signals for use in fog. It was held that these are unreliable, and therefore extremely dangerous to navigation. This conclusion is shared to a greater or less extent by many seamen, as well as by the Liverpool Ship Owners' Association referred to. The technical committees

of the board of trade charged with the consideration of these protests have reported, however, in favor of the adoption of the sound signals, and also of all of the six new signals, the advisability of which has been questioned by a number of able seamen. A select committee of the house of commons, after hearing all the opposition to the new rules, has reported that the six new signals may be in many cases useful, and could hardly in any case be dangerous. The board of trade therefore gives its approval to the new rules, and through the head of its marine department it notifies the objectors as follows:

The president fails to find in your letter any sufficient reason for reopening a question which has received such prolonged and careful consideration, and he finds, on the contrary, strong

reason for not doing so in the fact that such a course would be seriously detrimental to shipping interests by leaving unsettled for a further indefinite period the other far more important rules in regard to which international agreement was to come after the Washington conference.

This announcement will revive the hope of many that the rules recommended by the Washington marine conference have reached the final stage of discussion in England and will ere long be put in practical use. It has now been nearly seven years since these rules were formulated by the representatives of all the maritime powers of the world, after deliberations lasting from October 16 to December 31, 1889. The long delay in giving navigation the benefits of their practical enforcement at sea has apparently been largely attributable to England's indecision and inaction. Referring to the few signals in the new code which have been so adversely criticised, the British board of trade says that to reopen the question of adopting the code, after "such prolonged and careful consideration," merely on account of these signals, would be detrimental to shipping interests by leaving unsettled for a further indefinite period the other far more important rules in regard to which international agreement was to come after the Washington conference.”

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The international code of marine signals now in use is virtually forty years old, and forty years is an inordinately long time for any rules of the road at sea to be in force without any general revision to adapt them to ever changing conditions. In adopting any reform absolute reconcilement of the opposing views as expressed, even by experts, is of course impossible. In the present instance the adoption of the Washington rules has provoked in Great Britain a large and very powerful opposition, representing the practical experience of men who have either navigated or owned ocean-going vessels. This fact, it must be confessed, would be, and ought to be, a very cogent reason against the present decision of the board of trade, had not so much time already been lost in the discussion of the Washington rules and in the postponement of official action, to the detriment of all ocean navigation. It would seem, therefore, that the latest decision of the board of trade not to defer final action on the adoption of the new rules is not without force.

But in any rational view that can now be taken of the question no time should be lost in doing something. If the protests of the shipping interests against some of the new rules (which seem very far from being groundless protests) are to be respected and the new rules revised, it should be promptly done. Any questions that remain to be settled can be settled in a month as well as in a year if the authorities will give them due attention.

A case of considerable interest in its bearing on the conduct of strikers was decided by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts on Monday. The complainant, Frederick O. Vegehelan, sued George M. Gunther and other members of a furniture workers' union to obtain an injunction restraining them from intimidating persons by threats from entering the complainant's employment, and particularly from maintaining a parol in front of his premises for the purpose of preventing others from seeking service there. The court held that the employer was entitled to an injunction to restrain the maintenance of such a patrol. Two of the best known judges, however, dissented from this judgment, Chief Justice Walbridge A. Field, formerly a representative in congress from Massachusetts, and Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a son of a poet, who distinguished himself as a soldier in the Union army in the civil war, and who has written a good deal on the scientific development of the law. As to the propriety of injunctive relief against forcible intimidation, the courts have been almost unanimous, but there has not been so much harmony of judicial opinion as to simple acts of annoyance, such as merely patroling the sidewalk without any trespass or resort to any other measure except verbal persuasion not to enter the service of the employer.

A recent decision by Judge Leslie W. Russell has called attention to a curious opinion delivered by Chancellor Walworth upward of sixty years ago, in which that learned jurist quotes with approval the old adage, "A bird that can sing and will not sing must be made to sing." The suit before Justice Russell was brought against one George J. Gaskin, who had agreed to sing for the plaintiffs exclusively a series of songs for reproduction by means of

the graphophone. The complaint alleged a violation of the agreement, and as Gaskin put in no defence, an injunction was awarded which forbade him from singing for any one else. In granting an application to set aside this judgment and let him come in and defend, Mr. Justice Russell cites a case from Paige's Reports against an Italian prima basso, in which the chancellor intimates that the defendant ought to be compelled to perform his contract to sing in opera, but adds: "I am not aware that any officer of this court has that perfect knowledge of the Italian language or possesses that exquisite sensibility in the auricular nerve which is necessary to understand and to enjoy with a proper zest the peculiar beauties of the Italian opera, so fascinating to the fashionable world. There would be some difficulty, there. fore, even if the defendant was compelled to sing under the direction and in the presence of a master in chancery, in ascertaining whether he performed his engagement according to its spirit and intent." In that case, the singer was confined in what Chancellor Walworth called "that dismal cage," the debtor's prison in New York.

In proceedings entitled The Nebraska and In re Pringle, decided by the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, in January, 1895 (75 Fed. 598), it was held that upon the great lakes, as upon the high seas, the master of a vessel, for reasons of public policy, is not entitled to any lien for his wages. This rule is not affected by the fact that the owners have appointed a purser, who is the financial officer of the ship, and has the custody of the freight money. It was further held that the arrest and detention of a vessel in a civil suit does not work an abandonment of her, so as to entitle the master to salvage compensation for services rendered in saving her from damage by storm while in the marshal's custody; that it is the master's duty to remain with the ship, notwithstanding her arrest, and any services he may render are in the performance of his legal duties.

The court said in part:

1. In this country it is the law of the admiralty that the master has no lien upon the vessel for his services. (The Orleans, 11 Pet. 175, 184; Norton v. Switzer, 93 U. S. 355,