application: "It wrests the possession from the defendant and assumes and maintains the entire management and control of the property or fund, frequently changing its form and retaining possession through its officer, the Receiver, until the rights of all parties in interest are satisfactorily determined."

The right to appoint a Receiver, with all its attendant consequences had its origin in the English Court of Chancery, and was, until the abolition of that court as a distinct tribunal, always regarded as one of its most efficient remedies. But in its early history the remedy was granted with caution, and only upon a satisfactory showing of the neccssity for the immediate interposition of the court. Like all extraordinary remedies it was intended to meet extraordinary cases where there was no other adequate remedy. It was never intended to work harm and injustice by unnecessarily seizing the property of the individual or corporation and placing it beyond their reach and into the hands of a third party at the behest of a plaintiff in a suit, until a clear right so to do had been made manifest to the appointing court. But instead of a remedy to be used with great care in extraordinary cases, it has come to be an almost every day infliction in ordinary cases. In some instances it is invoked by irresponsible plaintiffs who give no bond, the property and business of the debtor is seized and taken from the owner's control, his business broken up and destroyed, without any adequate remedy for the wrongs thus inflicted; and this, too, in some instances without notice to the debtor and without opportunity to be heard until it is all too late to save his business from wreck and ruin. It certainly requires no argument to show the injustice of this condition of affairs and that it is a clear violation of both the natural and legal rights of man.

Since the time of the iron barons of Runnymede and the adoption of Magna Charta, it has been the law in every English speaking nation that-"No free man shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or in any

otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him nor condemn him but by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land; we will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man, either justice or right."

It was said by Judge Cooley that "The law must proceed slowly and by sure and deliberate steps; it must hear patiently before it condemns; it must begin investigation with charity; it must pursue it with skeptical caution; it must condemn with reluctance and only inflict punishment when the guilt is demonstrated by the tests of such crucibles as long experience proves to be reasonably sure. It must protect property by the same deliberate and cautious methods, and all its appeals must be to stability, order, regularity, patience and certainty. Those great, enduring qualities upon which the Mighty Founder has constructed the Universe he has made equally essential in the founding and development of a solid structure of government."

In the whirl and excitement, in the unrest and rapidity of the transaction of all business, in this afternoon of the nineteenth century, have we not, in some itstances, and notably in the appointment of Receivers, drifted away from ancient legal moorings that the experience of ages has proved safe? I attribute much of the cancerous evil existing to-day, and to which I have alluded, to the laws of this state governing the appointment of Receivers. As the law stands to-day application may be made for the appointment of a Receiver in a given case. It may be a just and meritorious case, or it may be an unjust case without merit, but in either case the plaintiff gives no bond; he assumes no liability or responsibility, and yet at his request and at his instance, the property of the debtor may be, against his will, and perhaps without notice, seized, taken and carried away, perhaps, and probably the business of the debtor ruined; and yet he has little or no remedy against the party that has invoked the aid of the law and started in motion the proceedings that have resulted thus disastrously to him.

In my opinion, we should endeavor to have the legisla

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ture this winter enact a law such as is already in force in some of the states, requiring the party who seeks the appointment of a Receiver not only to give notice to all parties to be affected thereby of the time and place of the hearing on the application, but also of the name of the proposed Receiver and of his proposed sureties, and of the proposed sureties of the applicant.

And further, that every order appointing a Receiver require the applicant to give a bond conditioned to pay all damages which the other parties to the suit or any of them may sustain by reason of the appointment of a Receiver in those cases in which it shall be finally decided, that the order ought not to have been granted. The bond should run to the defendant and all parties in interest in a penal sum sufficient to fully indemnify the parties for any and all damages and costs, and be executed by the applicant and two or more sureties to be approved by the court or judge, making the appointment. The conditions of the bond should be sufficiently broad and comprehensive to cover any and all damage that may be sustained by the debtor in the event it shall be finally decided that the Receiver ought not to have been appointed; and it should in terms provide that in the event it shall be determined the Receiver ought not to have been appointed, the bond shall stand as security to the Receiver not only for his compensation, but for all costs and expenses incurred by him in the conduct of the Receivership. In no event where the Receiver is wrongly appointed should such compensation, costs and expenses be deducted from the trust funds.

The courts of this state are authorized by statute to appoint Receivers upon various grounds, among others, of corporations which are insolvent, or in imminent danger of insolvency; and in such other cases as may be provided by law, and also when "in the discretion of the court" it may be necessary to secure ample justice to the parties.

The provisions of the law of this state relative to the appointment of Receivers may in some respects be "likened to a seine, the meshes of which are so large that a whale

can go through without brushing down a fin." I think no such extraordinary discretionary power ought to be vested in the court. As may be observed the provision is not, as in many of the states, after specifying the particular cases in which Receivers may be appointed, and in "all the other cases where Receivers have heretofore been appointed by the usage of courts of equity;" but the provision of our statute is that "when in the discretion of the court, it may be deemed necessary." Why specify particular instances in which a Receiver may be appointed? Why not say that a Receiver shall be appointed in all cases wherein the court thinks it advisable. Such a provision would obviate the necessity of the larger part of our present law, stating the grounds for the appointment of Receivers, and yet would give the court no more discretionary power than it now has. As the law stands, the appointment or non-appointment of a Receiver in a given case depends upon the "discretion" of the judge; the law to which Bentham applies the opprobious epithet of "Judge made law." The learning, experience and habits of thought of the judge have more or less to do with his discretionary judgment. Two judges equally honest and conscientious upon a given state of facts, may, in the exercise, too, of sound discretion, come to entirely different conclusions respecting the appointment of a Receiver.

In addition to all this, in the language of an eminent judge and author, "It is clear that radical tendencies have, in one particular, at least, carried us too far, and inwrong direction. I refer to the popular election of our state judges for a short term of office. Our ancestors were, in my judgment, wiser than we, in this regard; for we have adopted a policy which tends at least to impair the independence of the judiciary. England once had a dependent judiciary, and her then history exhibits to the world the shameful spectacle of judges cringing in the presence of royal power, and crawling in their own slime to the footstool of executive usurpation. So long as English judges were dependent upon the crown, they were

subservient to the crown, and so long were the streams of justice flowing from such a source impure. Perhaps, however, it will be said that the parallel will not hold good, since we have no king in America. No king in America? This I emphatically deny. We have a king in America—a many-headed king-king public opinion; a great, powerful and absolute monarch; for there is no limitation to his prerogatives! His power is not even limited like that of the czar of Russia-a despotism tempered by assassination. This great king of ours sits exalted like Satan in Paradise Lost

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,

Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold."

"Like all despotic rulers, our king often abuses his power; he is sometimes a capricious tyrant; and not unfrequently he rages like a very Moloch for the blood of some victim to be immolated upon the altar of his implacable wrath. He loves the sweet incense of flattery and lends willing attention to the unnumbered sycophants who pour their loathsome adulation into his ears. They extol his infallible wisdom; they appeal to his judgments as their sole standard of right and wrong, truth and justice; they invoke his indignation against all whose opinions happen not to coincide with their own unerring orthodoxy. Some of these idol worshipers have been heard to affirm that the voice of their great king is the voice of God; and instead of rebuking his flatterers for their blasphemous adulation, as did the semi-barbarous Canute of old, our more civilized monarch smiles benignantly upon them, and often raises them to the highest stations. Shall we subject the judges of the land to the capricious will of this sometimes unenlightened, and often arbitrary king?

"Let it not be said that I am wanting in a proper respect for public opinion. Not so. I regard a proper respect for public opinion- that decent respect to the opinions of