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Show -80- Less philosophic and more sophisticated* the alumni of the common lav; school themselves to tolerate all workable inconsistencies- Year after year vie in America go on hearing cass law emitted in long dogmatic quavers by some hun- dreds of courts* and statute law barked out biennially by some forty-five legislatures, to say nothing of a national Senate and Speaker of the House. We feel that the theme of one increasing purpose., and the harmony of msans to end* runs through the deafening sonata* and we await the philosophy of events= Our motto is that of George Washington, " Exitus acta probat." All this is very well3 so long as the equal protection of the laws and the common welfare of their subjects, are still conserved. Ivhere, however, one and the same transaction may be effectuated, nullified, altered or even penalized^ according to the forum into which it chances to be thrown* then diversity becomes oppressive. The law becomes, as it were, ambulatory* Legal auguries, instead of legal advise* must furnish the safe conduct of buying and selling, bequeathing and devising, marrying and divorcing* ob- taining testimony and being taxed. In relation to seme subjects* the laws are not merely repugnant and uncertain. They are, in their circumscribed operation, impotent or hurtful. There are demands of the general welfare which neither a nation of enumer- ated powers, nor a state of limited extent can recognizes and satisfy. These will assert themselves in time^ either by amendment of the constitution, or by some usurping agency, or else by concerted action among the states. Excluding all local3 as distinct from general concerns, and excluding also concerns wherein the states acting separately may measureably achieve the ends of justice, interstate action seems an available means (l) to integrate a policy already uniform; (2) to effect a complementary adjust- ment in the exercise of powers partly delegated to the nation and partly reserved to the states or the people, and (3) to vitalize powers which have been neither delegated to the Union nor prohibited to the states,or some of them, in concert with each other. If the field for interstate compact is thus limited, then some matters proposed as fit for uniform legislation would be more properly left to the independent action of the states. Thus the substantive law governing con- veyances of real estate, or descent and distribution, or the transmission of property by will, ssems peculiarly a matter for independent state action. Vfhat were once novelties of legislation and construction on these topics are novr, it is true, reduced to a classic uniformity^ among the states inheriting the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition. The statute of uses, the statutes of mortmain, the laws against perpetuities, the fines and common recovefies once invoked to emancipate entailed estates have all left their indelible marks upon our jurisprudence. This should not foreclose further experiments. At present, in the states governed by the principles of the Code Ie.poleon, there exists a still more far-reaching policy. Louisiana lawyers commend to other states her law touching the mutual property rights acquired by the husband and wife through marriage, and that leaving only part of a decedent's estate subject to bequest or devise* regulating the devolution of the residue by a statute of descent. Louisiana may be right or wrong, but that is her concern. And the other states which may be dram |