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Show -83- As is well known, the difficulties were brilliantly overcome in 1896 by a code founded on the Chalmers1 Code, which is now law in most of the states and territories* including Ohio* and in the District of Columbia* The annual conference of state commissioners itself now represents nearly all the members of the Union* In 1898 Ohio joined temporarily- and again in 1902* by a permanent act* This act authorized a board of three commissioners on uniform laws, and munificently provided $500 a year to support their work. Needless to say, these eminent men have contributed to the conference that weight which the sons of Ohio always lend to national councils, whether of law or politics. Since the Negotiable Instruments Act, the work of codification has con- cerned itself with other rubrics of commercial law, some complete, some in preparation. Two of them, regulating Bills of Sale and Bills of Lading, have just been adopted in Ohio. It is no disparagement of the services rendered by this body, the Tri- bonians of the American people., to point out the limits of their influence. The negotiable instruments code, though only twelve years old, has already passed through various courts, an£ has come out diversified in several of its features. The president of the conference, Mr. Amasa Eaton, of Rhode Island,/was led to lament a short time ago, that "However, clear the statute, there is an unfortunate tendency of the courts to fall back to the old law." He might have added* no human language can be absolutely accurate and clear, and if courts have already disagreed in clear cases, much more will the variance develop in those which are doubtful. There will be no lack of such cases. The fact is illustrated by adjudications touching the anomalous or irregular endorser. Mr* Tompkins, to whose paper I have already referred* emphasized that the irregular endorser was, in the days of the uncodified law, neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. Like the bat in the fable he was a bird or a mouse, according to the place where he alighted. He was here a guarantor, there a joint maker and yonder an endorser, or perhaps a second endorser. The Code seems to define him as Man endorser" and to set out the specific rights and liabilities of an endorser. Yet the Circuit Court of Clark County, in this state, found him otherwise, without any hesitation© It is true, the losing party went to the Supreme Court, where the lower decision was reversed, and the law of Ohio fixed in harmony with the weight of authorityc Yet the outcome must be ascribed rather to good fortune than to the compelling clearness of the Code itself. We may safe- ly conjecture that in no long time all varieties of construction will be thriving over the smooth statutory surface. Courts will not lay themselves open to the criticism which a mountaineer once made upon James Russell Lowell, that he was a "monotonous speller." The wider the field covered by codifications, even the codification of forms and technicalities, the more numerous will be the ultimate varia- tions from the parent type. Witness the infinite variety of practice in the one State of New York under her minutely codified procedure. The courts who are to complete the lofty tower of uniform law will fall into a babel, of tongues and dialects. |