It may be that you are no lawyer; but you
have at least that amount of intelligence
which the average citizen is presumed to pos
sess. To your common sense I appeal:
How could the Legislature, OF 1893,
have meant banks of issue, when everybody
knows that we have had no such banks since
the Civil War?
As a lawyer, grabbing at straws to save a
client, I would make a point of that kind
against a similar indictment; but I would feel
no surprise if the demurrer were overruled.
Judge Roan, of the Fulton Superior Court,
decided the question right, and the Court of
Appeals was wrong in reversing him.
The act of 1893 is to be conclusively pre
sumed to apply to banks then existing, not to
antebellum banks. Laws of all kinds (unless
it is otherwise expressly stated,) apply to
and future conditions, not to condi
tions which have passed away.
The Court of Appeals decided that the
Legislature, in the acts of 1893, referred to
banks which perished during the War Be
tween the States!
How could anything be more absurd? Just
use your common sense. Very human are the
judges, and some of their “decisions” insult
decency and unbiased intelligence.
By the act of 1893, the Legislature made it
a penitentiary crime for a bank officer to use
more than 10 per cent, of its capital stock.
The Court of Appeals “decided” that the
Legislature had reference to banks of issue.
We have had no banks of issue since the
A Weekly Paper Edited by THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON
Atlanta, Ga., Thursday, December 23, 1909
Sixties. But the Court “decided” that the
Legislature meant these defunct institutions.
