treated as its purchaser or assignee, unless the facts show it was intended as an absolute payment. In the last class, the insurer is subrogated to the remedies of the assured, upon the ground that upon payment he is entitled to the property insured as being abandoned by the assured: Bishop v. O'Conner, 69 Ill.

TRUSTS AND TRUSTEES.

Good Faith-Purchase by Trustee of Trust Property-Actual Fraud --Lapse of Time.-Though equity will enforce in the most rigid manner good faith on the part of a trustee, and vigilantly watch any acquisition by him in his individual character, of property which has ever been the subject of his trust, yet where he has sold the trust property to another, that sale having been judicially confirmed after opposition by the cestui que trust, the fact that thirteen years afterwards he bought the property from the person to whom he once sold it does not, of necessity, vitiate his purchase. The question in such a case becomes one of actual fraud. And where on a bill charging fraud, the answer denies it in the fullest manner, alleging a purchas bona fide and for full value paid, and that when he, the trustee, made the sale to the person from whom he has since bought it, the purchase by himself, now called in question, was not thought of either by himself or his vendee-the court will not decree the purchase fraudulent, the case being heard on the pleadings, and without any proofs taken: Stephen v. Beale et ux., 22 Wall.

The complainants in this case, who alleged fraud and relied on the trustee's possession of the trust property after an alleged sale of it, as evidence of it, not stating when the trustee came into possession-that is to say, how soon after his former sale-the court assumed the time to be thirteen years; this term having elapsed between the date of the sale by the trustee and the filing of the bill (or cross-bill, rather) to set it aside; the court acting on the presumption that the complainant stated the case as favorably as he could for himself, and would have mentioned the fact that trustee had been in possession long before the bill was filed, if he had really been so: Id.

Right to claim Compensation.-Where a trustee claims compensation for services, he must show that he has discharged the trust; and if the agreement to pay him out of the fund is disputed, he must establish it by a preponderance of evidence: Jenkins v. Doolittle, 69 Ill.

ISAAC F. REDFIELD.

As we go to press we receive the announcement by telegraph of the death, at his residence in Charlestown, Mass., on March 23d, of Hon. ISAAC F. REDFIELD, formerly Chief Justice of Vermont, and for the last fifteen years one of the editors of this journal. We shall present our readers a sketch of this distinguished jurist in a future number.

THE

AMERICAN LAW REGISTER.

MAY 1876.

ISAAC F. REDFIELD.

As already briefly announced in our last issue, this distinguished jurist died at his residence in Charlestown, Mass., on March 23d 1876. So great a loss to the science of jurisprudence cannot be passed by without some notice, especially in a law journal with which he was so long and so intimately connected, and in which he had made himself no less the friend than the instructor of the entire legal profession of the United States.

ISAAC FLETCHER REDFIELD was the oldest of twelve children of Dr. Peleg Redfield, an eminent physician, and was born April 10th 1804, at Weathersfield, Vermont. He graduated at Dartmouth College in the class of 1825 and was admitted to the bar of Vermont in 1827. After practising at Derby for eight years, during the last three of which he was attorney of the state for Orleans. county, he was in 1835, at the early age of thirty-one, elected by the legislature of Vermont to the bench of the Supreme Court, and held that position by successive annual elections until 1860, when he resigned, or rather declined a re-election. For the last eight years of this period he was Chief Justice of the court. From 1857 to 1861 he was also Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in Dartmouth College, sueceeding the Hon. Joel Parker. In 1861 he removed to Massachusetts, where he continued to reside until his death, with the exception of a year or so, in 1867 and 1868, which he spent in England and France, as special counsel for the United States, by appointment from the State Department, to look after

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the interests of the Government in the property that had belonged to the Confederate states at the close of the war.

These few events mark the outlines of his public life, but they give little indication, except to the instructed, of the steady industry, the activity of mind and the amount of useful labor accomplished during more than the third of a century.

During all the time that Judge REDFIELD sat upon the bench, the duties of a judge of the Supreme Court of Vermont were extremely arduous. The court consisted during most of the time of five judges, who held separate circuit courts for jury trials, were ex officio chancellors, and heard and determined many important cases in equity, besides sitting in banc for several months each year for the final decision of all questions of common law and equity upon writs of error and appeals. During the first few years that Judge REDFIELD occupied the bench, the judges also, under a statute of the state, reported their own decisions. All of these varied and exacting duties he performed, not only to the satisfaction of his own bar, but to the great reputation of his court and himself throughout the country. His decisions extend from the eighth to the thirty-third volume of Vermont Reports, inclusive, and long before he left the bench they had established for him a national reputation as a wise, learned and able jurist.

Great and permanent, however, as is his reputation as a judge, it is probable that he was even more widely known to the profession of the present day as a law-writer. Notwithstanding the constant and engrossing labors of his judicial position, Judge REDFIELD found time, while still on the bench, to write a text-book on the Law of Railways, published in 1857, which at once became the accepted authority as the repository of the American law on that important subject, and, after passing through five editions, remains without a rival at the present day. It is probable that the success of this work, combined with his desire for a more settled and domestic life than was possible under the requirements of circuit duty on the bench, led him, in 1860, to the resolution to resign, and devote himself more exclusively thereafter to the literature of the law. The weight of advancing years he could scarcely have felt. Erect, and active in body as well as mind, he still lacked four years of the age at which the Procrustean laws of New York had declared Chancellor KENT unfit for longer judicial service, and at fifty-six he, like the great chancellor, was in his prime, and like

him, too, he devoted the remaining years of his mature intellect to the instruction of his professional brethren by his pen. In 1864 he published the first volume of an elaborate work on the Law of Wills, which was subsequently expanded, in successive editions, to three volumes, covering the entire subject. Every lawyer will appreciate the magnitude of such a labor. Few states, except the youngest of the union, fail to afford, by themselves, cases enough on this prolific subject to fill a text-book, and the task of collecting, arranging and collating them, and extracting the rules of decision from the vast and incongruous mass, is one that might well appal a less industrious and courageous man. This, like his preceding work, had a marked success, and the author was engaged in the last touches of a new edition at the time of his death. Besides these principal works, Judge REDFIELD published, in 1869, a treatise on the Law of Carriers and Bailments, which was, however, mainly a condensation, and more convenient form, of the parts of his work on Railways relating to those subjects; in 18701872, a collection, in two volumes, of Leading American Railway Cases, with notes; in 1871, in connection with Mr. M. M. BIGELow, a collection of Leading American Cases, on the Law of Bills of Exchange, Promissory Notes and Checks, with notes; a volume of Leading American Cases on the Law of Wills, with notes; and also edited, with great care and learning, Greenleaf on Evidence, Story on Agency, on the Conflict of Laws, on Equity Jurisprudence, and on Equity Pleadings.

In 1861 Judge REDFIELD became one of the editors of the American Law Register, and from that time to the present, few numbers have been issued without an article or an annotation by him upon a leading case. Of the extent and importance of these labors our readers do not need to be told. Covering in their range every branch of the law, and every variety of treatment, from a brief pertinent criticism of the case itself up to the most learned and elaborate monograph on the subject suggested by it, they have exhibited the depth and breadth of his learning, the facility of his command of legal principles, the high integrity and fearless independence of his personal character. These qualities, no less than the warmth of his heart, had made him seem a friend to all his readers, whose monthly visits every one will regret to have so unexpectedly terminated.

Among the articles which he has thus furnished to our pages

during the last fifteen years were many of great importance, to which he gave much thought and labor. As specimens we may mention those on Street Railways, vol. 1, N. S., 193; Mortgages, vol. 2, p. 1; the Conflict of Laws Affecting Marriage and Divorce, vol. 3, p. 193; the Responsibilities and Duties of Express Carriers, vol. 5, p. 1; Regulations of Inter-state Traffic by Congress, vol. 13, p. 1; the Law applicable to the Negotiation of Contracts by Telegraph, vol. 14, p. 401; and the Right and Power of Eminent Domain in the National Government, in the April number of the present year. These articles he regarded as among his best work; he took pleasure in them and in the fact that in them he was addressing the entire professional audience of the country, who, through these writings, had become his admirers and friends. last work was the correction of the proofs of the article on Eminent Domain in the April number. Besides this, he had prepared some notes to cases which will yet appear in our pages during the next few months.

His

His writings were characterized by breadth and liberality of views, by clearness and force as well as originality of opinion, by a conservatism as cautious as it was free from timidity or fogyism, and by great learning, not only in case law, but in fundamental legal principles which he handled with the case that comes from long familiarity. He wrote rapidly, with the facility of a full Hence his style was perhaps always a little diffuse and occasionally lacking in grace, but, however hasty, it never degenerated into inaccuracy of thought or even into obscurity of expres

man.

sion.

In this day of the diffusion of education and the multiplication. of books, perhaps it can hardly be said, as COKE, paraphrasing Seneca, says of Littleton, that "when a great learned man (who is long in making) dieth, much learning dieth with him." Yet in a considerable sense it is true even now that a ripe and experienced scholar in the law leaves a gap which can never be quite filled. A certain command of questions from having grown up with them from their cradle to their maturity, does die with the learned of their own day and generation. The times change and the questions which command attention in the law change with them. The rules which have prevailed in the contest of yesterday become settled, and to-morrow are accepted upon didactic authority, while the reason which inquires and disputes and struggles, goes forward to new battles over