severe dislocation of trade on the Continent of Europe had far-reaching effects on freight markets. On the one hand there was an immediate falling-off in Continental buying of grain, while on the other the decline in German coal production which followed was responsible for an abnormal demand for tonnage to carry coal from Wales, the north-east coast, and Scotland to Germany and France, and in a lesser degree to other parts of Europe. With the advent of summer this demand fell off, and conditions for cargo steamers became depressed. In the second half of the year the Japanese earthquake created a demand for tonnage to carry grain, flour, and lumber from the Pacific Coast of North America, and grain from Australia, to Japan. The unprecedented volume of chartering for trans-Pacific trade was, indeed, an outstanding feature of the year. A demand for vessels to load grain from South Russia to Continental and British ports was an interesting autumn development, while at the close of the year there was a substantial volume of time chartering of vessels for general trading for periods of from six to nine months. New tonnage constructed was almost unprecedently low, the total launched from yards in Great Britain and Ireland being estimated at 650,000 tons, out of a world total of 1,643,000 tons. These figures, however, are not a true index to shipping activity in the year, for there was a considerable decrease in the number of ships laid up idle.

The coal trade had its best year since the war. No serious labour dispute occurred and, thanks to an active Continental demand, resulting from the stoppage in the Ruhr, production was larger, prices higher, and profits more adequate. Output was 278,500,000 tons against 252,000,000 tons in 1922. With the exception of 1913, when the total was 287,500,000 tons, the production was the largest on record. Exports were the largest in the history of the trade. The total exported as cargo was 79,500,000 tons, an increase of 15,200,000 tons. In 1913, which held the previous highest record, the total was 73,400,000 tons. The cotton industry had a black year. The high price of the raw material and the consequent inability of foreign buyers to purchase cotton goods seriously curtailed production and exports. Normally four-fifths of our cotton production is exported. This country possesses about one-half of the world's cotton spindles. In the woollen industry there was a 70 per cent. increase in imports, chiefly from France, of woollen tissues, owing to the excessive depreciation of the franc, and a decline in imports of raw wool. Although profit margins were narrow the Yorkshire industry had a good year.

The world's production of steel ingots and casting for 1923 was, according to the Cleveland Iron Trade Review, 72,573,000 tons, or 97 per cent. of the 1913 figure; the output of pig-iron 64,580,000 tons, or 84 per cent. of the 1913 figure. For 1922 the steel output was 63,098,000 tons and of pig-iron 51,938,000 tons. America's steel production last year was 42 per cent. over the 1913 figure, and the pig-iron production 30 per cent. more. Europe's production of steel was 26,023,000 tons against 25,985,000 tons in 1922 and 42,562,000 tons in 1913. Great Britain's pig-iron production increased in 1923 from 4,902,000 tons to 7,360,000 tons, this figure being 71 per cent. of the 1913 output. German production was 4,000,000 tons in 1923, against 8,000,000 tons in 1922 and 19,000,000 tons

in 1913. Great Britain's steel output in 1923 was 8,480,000 tons, against 5,881,000 tons in 1922 and 7,664,000 tons in 1913; thus the 1923 figure was 10 per cent. above the 1913 figure. German production was 5,000,000 tons against 9,000,000 tons in 1922 and 18,631,000 tons in 1913. The British railways, which operated as four groups under the Railways Act, 1921, for the first time in 1923 carried more passengers and a larger quantity of goods and merchandise than in any previous year.

LAW.

FOR the first time for several years the work of the Courts during 1923 was normal. The number of cases, which grew abnormally large after the Armistice, was at the beginning of 1923 not much in excess of the number at the commencement of 1913. At the end of the year the volume of litigation in the High Court was practically the same as at the beginning; about 2,100 cases, as compared with about 2,200. There was, however, a continued decline in the business of the Divorce Court, indicating a further improvement in the social conditions arising out of the war. The number of divorce suits, which was about 2,500 in 1921 and about 1,000 in 1922, fell to some 800 in 1923. But an increasing use was made during the year of the new facilities for the trial of matrimonial cases in the Assize Courts.

Chief among the legislative changes of the year, so far as the administration of justice is concerned, is the Matrimonial Causes Act, by which a wife has been empowered to petition for divorce on the ground of adultery alone, the necessity for proving either desertion or cruelty against her erring husband being removed, and thus in large measure establishing in the Divorce Court the equality of the sexes. Another statute closely affecting the work of the legal profession is the new Rent Restrictions Act, by which the provisions of the earlier Acts have been continued or amended. Applications under these much criticised Acts became so numerous in the County Courts that an increase in the number of County Court judges-or a substantial addition to their moderate salaries was demanded. Many important changes were made by the Workmen's Compensation Act, passed on the eve of the Dissolution. The new Act, in addition to increasing the scale of compensation payable to an injured workman, extended the liability of employers for accidents to their employees which were not covered by the old legislation. Formerly a workman who was injured whilst acting in contravention of the orders and regulations, or without the instructions, of his employers was not entitled to compensation. Under the new Act compensation has become payable in these circumstances, provided the workman, when he meets with an accident, is acting in connexion with the business of his employer. Many other Acts were placed on the Statute Book during the year, but these three call for special mention here, because they closely affect the work of the Courts.

More notable would have been the legislative record if three measures of law reform introduced by the Lord Chancellor had been passed. The object of the Judicature (Consolidation) Bill was to bring within the four corners of a single statute all the provisions of the numerous Acts affect

ing the procedure of the High Court. How necessary and enormous is this work of consolidation may be judged from the fact that the existing Judicature Acts cover a period of fifty years and that the Bill introduced by Lord Cave contained no fewer than one hundred and ninety-eight sections. By the Administration of Justice Bill it was sought to restore to litigants their pre-war right to trial by jury, and to minimise the waste of judicial time on circuit by empowering the Lord Chief Justice to dispense with the holding of Assizes at towns where there was not a substantial amount of business to be done. The provisions of the Bill relating to the circuit system, which were based on the recommendations of a Committee of which Mr. Justice Swift was the Chairman, excited a good deal of suspicion and opposition in the smaller assize towns, whose ancient privileges were thought to be imperilled. Less opposition was aroused by the Criminal Justice Bill, which provided for the trial at Quarter Sessions of a large number of offences now triable only at Assizes, with the object of reducing those long delays in criminal cases in the provinces which one outspoken judge long ago described as "an outrage and a scandal." Owing to the long and irregular intervals between the Assizes a considerable number of untried prisoners are kept in prison three months and more before they are brought to trial. By another noteworthy provision of this Bill it was proposed to abolish the old legal assumption that a criminal offence committed by a wife in the presence of her husband is committed under his "coercion." With each of these three measures considerable progress was made; probably they would all have been passed during the Autumn session if Parliament had not been dissolved.

Much discussion was excited by the Report of a Committee which, under the chairmanship of Lord Justice Atkin, inquired into the relations of crime and insanity. The Committee recommended that the law should be so altered that "it should be recognised that a person charged criminally with an offence is irresponsible for his act when the act is committed under an impulse which the prisoner was by mental disease in substance deprived of any power to resist." This doctrine of "uncontrollable impulse," though readily accepted by the medical world, was keenly criticised in legal circles. It deserves, therefore, to be recorded that the Committee consisted entirely of lawyers, and that such experienced criminal lawyers as Sir Edward Marshall Hall, K.C., Sir Herbert Stephen, Sir R. D. Muir, and Sir Archibald Bodkin were among its members. Another Committee appointed by the Lord Chancellor towards the close of the year was for a very different purpose. It was appointed to consider "what amendments in the law are required to enable the statutory law affected by the Law of Property Act, 1922, to be satisfactorily considered." The appointed date for the Law of Property Act to come into force is January, 1925. Whether the recommendations of the Committee-of which Mr. Justice Romer was appointed Chairman--will involve the further postponement of the operation of that great measure of land law reform has still to be seen.

A great improvement was made in the procedure of the Divorce Court by the publication of a new set of Rules. So successfully was the task of simplification accomplished that the old Rules, which numbered 222,

were reduced to ninety-eight. In connexion with the procedure of the Divorce Court may be noticed the strong effort made by the Law Society to secure for the "Poor Persons" system a larger measure of professional support. It became evident that the existing system, under which solicitors who gave their services gratuitously to "poor persons" were frequently out of pocket, was likely to languish for want of professional aid, and a special meeting of the Law Society was summoned to consider the matter, at which it was resolved, not only that the State should provide a fund out of which all reasonable out-of-pocket expenses might be paid, but also that undefended divorce cases should be made triable in the County Courts. But the year passed without the Law Society's recommendations being carried out.

On the Bench several noteworthy changes were occasioned by death or retirement. Lord Sterndale, whose sudden death deprived the Court of Appeal of a very learned and highly esteemed president, was succeeded in the Mastership of the Rolls by Sir Ernest Pollock, who had ceased to be Attorney-General some twelve months before. Three King's Bench judgeships became vacant. One vacancy was created by the death of Mr. Justice Bray, one of the strongest judges in the Courts, though not disinclined to technicality; another was occasioned by the retirement of Lord Coleridge, whose fine judicial temper and stately diction enabled him to preside with conspicuous dignity at important criminal trials. Neither of these vacancies was filled up, the Government omitting to obtain the Parliamentary sanction which is necessary to fill a vacant judgeship in the King's Bench Division while the number of puisne judges in the Division is not below fifteen. The third vacancy was caused by the retirement of Mr. Justice Darling, who throughout the twenty-five years he served as a judge was most widely known as a judicial wit, but whose humour was by no means the only distinctive quality he successfully displayed in the administration of the law. His place was filled by Mr. G. J. Talbot, K.C., a recognised authority on local government law, as well as an ecclesiastical lawyer of high repute. Several other changes in the High Court followed the decision of the Government to fill up the Lordship of Appeal which had been allowed to remain vacant since the promotion of Lord Cave to the Woolsack. Lord Justice Younger was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, and assumed the title of Lord Blanesburgh on his elevation to the peerage. He was succeeded in the Court of Appeal by Mr. Justice Sargant, to whose place as a Chancery judge Mr. Tomlin, K. C., was appointed with the marked approval of the Bar.

In the lesser spheres of judicial life changes were less numerous than usual. The only vacancy on the County Court Bench was created by the death of Sir George Sherston Baker, whose place on the Lincolnshire circuit was filled by Judge Chapman. The Metropolitan Bench lost a most popular figure in Mr. I. A. Symmons, who was succeeded by Mr. Basil Watson, K.C. Several important legal appointments of an administrative rather than a judicial character fell vacant. Sir Charles Fortescue Brickdale resigned the office of Chief Registrar of the Land Registry, after holding the office for nearly a quarter of a century, and was succeeded by Mr. Stewart Wallace, who had been Assistant Registrar for several years.