=The Need for Greater Uniformity in Statute Law.=—In many matters of business the fact that the statutes are different in every one of the forty-eight states is a great disadvantage. When wholesale dealers sell goods on credit to merchants in far-off states they want to know just what the laws provide in the matter of collecting debts. The only way to do this is to enquire into the statutes of each state where goods are sold. So it is with wills, contracts, notes, and so on. In some states a will must have three witnesses; in others only two. The man who endorses a note in one state assumes greater liabilities than are assumed by endorsers somewhere else. To remedy this situation there is a strong movement to secure uniformity among all the states in the case of certain important statutes (for example, the statutes relating to sales). A commission of eminent lawyers has been at work for years preparing uniform laws on various subjects and some of these have been adopted by the legislatures of many states. A uniform statute relating to negotiable instruments (notes, bills of exchange, etc.) has now been adopted by more than forty states, and a uniform sales act by about a dozen of them. =Equity.=—Finally, there is the branch of jurisprudence known as equity. People think of this word as implying something that is more just than the law, something which has its roots in the conscience of the judge rather than in the statute books. But equity as actually administered in the courts is made up of formal rules which the judges apply in certain cases without having much discretion in the matter. The rules of equity are written in books just like the rules of law, and they are about as precise. [Sidenote: The origin of equity.] The origin of these rules is an interesting story which cannot be narrated here save in the briefest way. In early England there grew up, side by side with the common law, a set of unwritten rules administered by the chancellor, who was called the “keeper of the king’s conscience” and to whom people could appeal for relief when they felt that they had not received justice in the courts of common law. At the outset the chancellor, whose office eventually grew into a Court of Chancery, decided every case on its own merits; but in due course all cases of the same kind came to be decided in the same way, and thus a set of rules or principles was gradually formulated. With further growth these rules of chancery or equity were gathered together, arranged logically, put into written form, applied by the English courts, brought to America in colonial days, retained after the Revolution, and they continue in force at the present time.