have, attached thereto or impressed thereon, except such official seals as may be provided for by law.

Fees. The fees for services connected with the proceedings in the judicial courts are regulated by No. 118.

Execution. Grain growing and crops unharvested may be levied upon, but cannot be sold on execution, until the same are ripe or severed from the ground. No. 124.

PENNSYLVANIA. The acts passed by the general assembly of this state, at the session of 1840, are apparently two hundred and fifty-seven in number, and the joint resolutions thirty-seven. We say "apparently," because, on looking over the volume in which they are published we find no less than seventy-six acts and resolutions, which, under the phrase," and for other purposes " added to their titles, contain enactments independent of the subjects stated therein in any number from one to a dozen. Thus, “an act relating to executions, and for other purposes," containing twenty-three sections, has only one (the first) on the subject announced in the title; the second confirms certain sales of real estate heretofore made by coroners and sheriffs; the third legalizes depositions heretofore taken, in which the witnesses had been examined and their testimony written down before having been sworn; the fourth relates to the election laws; the fifth authorizes the president judges of the first and twelfth districts to exchange seats in certain cases; the sixth makes citizens of boroughs, &c., competent to be witnesses and jurors in cases in which the borough or city is a party or interested; the seventh authorizes recorders of deeds to take the acknowledgment and proof of the execution of conveyances; the eighth extends the mechanics' lien law to the counties of Wayne and Fayette; the ninth and tenth relate to streets, and the eleventh to grand jurors, in Philadelphia county; the twelfth to the seventeenth inclusive establish the Fairmount Cemetery company; the eighteenth authorizes Jacob Mitchel to convey real estate; the nineteenth authorizes Harriet Coleman, as guardian, to sell and also to purchase certain real estate; the twentieth authorizes the commissioners of Indiana

county to sell certain property; the twenty-first makes an appropriation for the house of refuge; the twenty-second authorizes the correction of certain errors in the laying out of a road; and the twenty-third constitutes certain companies of the militia a battalion. These matters are all independent of each other, and have nothing at all to do with the subject of executions, which is the only one specified in the title. One of the most amusing instances of this omnibus style of legislation is to be found in " an act to incorporate the Lehigh Company for the insurance of the lives of horses and the detection of horse thieves, and for other purposes." The other purposes are the prevention of the citizens of other states from hunting or killing deer in the counties of Monroe, Pike and Wayne. We cannot but think that this slovenly and confused mode of legislation is as injurious to the public interest, as it is disgraceful to the legislative bodies by whom it is practised. The laws of 1840 do not appear to be of any general

concern.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

1.-Report of the d'Hauteville Case: the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, at the suggestion of Paul Daniel Gonzalve Grand d'Hauteville, versus David Sears, Miriam C. Sears, and Ellen Sears Grand d'Hauteville. Habeas corpus for the custody of an infant child. Philadelphia: 1840.

THIS case, which has created so strong an interest among all classes of people, has now been decided; and the astonishment of the profession, generally, at the result, viewed as a judicial decision, is not less than the disappointment which it has occasioned to those who consider it only in its bearing upon the morals of social and domestic life. The case was shortly this. Mrs. d'Hauteville, in September, 1838, being then living separated from her husband, became the mother of a son, for the custody of whom, Mr. d'Hauteville, in July last, sued out a writ of habeas corpus in the court of general sessions of Philadelphia, where the mother and child were then resident. The writ was directed to the mother, and also to David Sears, her father, and Miriam C. Sears, her mother. The two latter returned that the child was not in their custody. The mother, in her return, claimed the custody of the child, exclusively of the father, on account of its tender age and its need of a mother's care; but she did not allege or prove any thing against her husband, showing that her separation and living apart from him were justifiable on any ground known to the law, or in virtue of any legal agreement on his part; or that he was incompetent by reason of his moral or religious character, or want of property, to have

the custody and nurture of the child. The court decided, notwithstanding, that the child should for the present, at least, remain with the mother. The absurdity of this decision is so glaring, that if it had not proceeded from a court of the state of Pennsylvania, where there is the semblance of a precedent in its favor, we should be inclined to consider it as entirely incompatible with that good faith, for which our courts are not undistinguished, and which has hitherto remained unsullied. The opinion of the court, although a novel one, we shall not insert in our pages: it can never become a precedent, inasmuch as it is not well reasoned, and the authorities commented upon in it are nearly all of them perverted or misrepresented. A single consideration only is needful to show the justness of our condemnation of this decision. The wife is, at this moment, for any thing that appears in the report, living in a state of separation from her husband, without any valid cause known to the law, or of which any court could take cognizance; her husband is legally entitled to the possession and custody of her person; and any one harboring her without his consent is liable to his action. These are acknowledged and familiar principles of the law. Mark the contradiction, if the decision of the Philadelphia court of sessions is also law. The husband is entitled to the custody of the wife's person, and, consequently, of every thing of which she has the personal custody, and yet she is entitled to the adverse and exclusive custody of the child. In order, therefore, to make her conduct coincide with the law of the court, Mrs. d'Hauteville must disregard and set at defiance those legal duties of the marital relation, which are as old and as well established as the common law itself. In other words, she is protected by the decision of this court, in her disobedience to the law of the land. One further consideration, and we have done with the judicial anomaly of the d'Hauteville case. If the court of sessions of Philadelphia is willing to take cognizance of cases like the present, in which there is no legal cause of separation, for the purpose of considering and regulating the nurture of a child during its infancy, we hope that no husbands and wives in that good city will ever hereafter take upon themselves the responsibility of deciding

upon the propriety and expediency of putting their children out to nurse, or of consigning them to the custody of their grandmothers, but will at once apply to the sound judicial discretion of that honorable court.

We have heard the blame of the disagreement between the principal parties in this case attributed to the mother of Mrs. d'Hauteville; but, whether truly or not, that lady is at least entitled to be exonerated from the charge of any positive acts, with a view to the separation which took place, so far as appears from the evidence before the court; though it is of course impossible to determine how far she might have been implicated by that part of the relator's evidence which was rejected. Still, we cannot but think the lofty tone of the court, in its exculpation of Mrs. Sears, somewhat ridiculous; seeing that the case was not one of a failure of evidence to support a charge, but a rejection on technical grounds of all the proofs in its favor.

We cannot close this notice, without bearing our testimony to the admirable manner in which the relator's case is presented to the court. The written documents drawn up on behalf of Mr. d'Hauteville, by his counsel, are exceedingly able and eloquent.

2.—A Treatise on the Law of Watercourses; with an Appendix, containing Forms of Declaration, &c. By JOSEPH K. Angell. Third edition. Revised and containing references to many new adjudged cases. Boston Charles C. Little and James Brown. 1840.

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This valuable work, in its progress to the third edition, has received many additions and much improvement. The plan of it has also been somewhat changed. Having been made the subject of an elaborate article in our journal (vol. ii. p. 25) when it was first published, and having been already sixteen years in the hands of the profession, we shall confine ourselves to briefly pointing out the changes, which it has successively undergone. In the second edition, the work was much enlarged, by the addition of the new cases,-by "quoting in frequent instances the precise