accordingly brought, the result of which is that cock-fighting may now be indulged in with impunity over the length and breadth of Scotland. It is hardly to be wondered at that a decision so unexpected should have attracted a good deal of amused, as well as ignorant, criticism. The English journals, in particular, denounce the judgment. One need not pay much heed to them, however. Whenever a decision is given in Scotlandas in the dishorning case-which conflicts with law laid down in the Strand, we are sure to have an outburst of insufferable and condescending ignorance.

Cock-fighting was a very ancient pastime. It almost attained the dignity of a science. Kings and heroes, ladies and men of learning, patronised it in the old days. With the growth of education, however, those who favoured it came to be found more in the pot-house than in courtly halls. By the beginning of this century it had come to be practised only by the lower classes, and, strangely enough, by schoolboys. Mains were held sometimes in churchyards, sometimes in the dog ends of country kirks, and sometimes in cock-pits. At Christmas time cock-fighting formed a principal amusement of schoolboys. It took place in the schools, and was presided over by dominies, to whom the slain was a perquisite. Having descended so far in the grade of pastimes, and laying no claim to science beyond its scholastic association, the Legislature passed the Act 13 & 14 Vict. cap. 92, which forbids the ill-treatment or torture of any animal. Up to almost the close of this present century, it has been thought that fightingcocks were included in the prohibition thus enacted. It is a somewhat rude awakening to find that it is not so. The opinion of the judges is unanimous that cocks are not within the meaning of "domestic animals" or animals," and that therefore a cockfight is not prohibited. Cock-fighting is placed upon the same level as betting. Betting is not an illegal amusement; but keeping a betting house is. Keeping a cock-pit may be penalised, but it is pretty clear that cock-fighting will be revived if a fresh statute is not at once put on the books.

It is beside the point perhaps to inquire why the natural instincts of cocks should not be gratified. Divesting one's-self of prejudice or sentimentality, two or three considerations seem efficient to place cock-fighting on a comparatively high level. In the first place, it has a noble ancestry. It has been practised by such diverse and elevated characters as Themistocles, Cæsar, Henry VIII., and the village dominie. Those characters gave license to their natural propensities. One of the natural propensities of man is to fight either with his hand or with his tongue. It is a natural propensity of cocks to fight also. The propensity of the dominie is, perhaps, not so much to fight as to punish; but the result of the act of fighting is the infliction of bodily pain, and in this respect there is really no distinction between fighting and punishing, except that in the case of the dominie the victim is not allowed to retaliate. Apart from that, a plea for cockfighting might still be urged by contrasting it with the butchery indulged in by the upper classes. Take battues. One of these

took place during the last month on the Dysart estate, belonging to Lord Rosslyn, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Cambridge. The Dysart estate is about as bare of game as a golf links; but a large sum of money was spent in populating the coverts, as the newspapers were pleased to call them, with a good stock. The result was that the royal party went home each night with gigantic bags.

Turning to the state of business, one is pleased to see that the Outer House continues so well occupied. Lord M'Laren is to take five jury trials from Lord Stormonth Darling. The first of these begins on 18th January. Lord Stormonth Darling has fixed proofs well into summer. Lord Low is about as well. occupied. The other judges also have quite enough to do.

Death has been pretty busy lately in the agency branch. Two or three well-known faces have disappeared. The most known of course was Mr. Morton, the particulars of whose life I daresay you will outline in another page. Mr. Morton succeeded John Clerk Brodie as Liberal Crown agent, and although he did not figure in so many legislative achievements as his predecessor, he enjoyed quite as large a share of the respect and confidence of the profession. He was also one of the few agents who retain the intimacy of the eminent counsel on the bench. Another notable, although not so well known, figure has disappeared in Mr. Thomas M'Laren, SS.C. Mr. M'Laren was hail-fellow to everybody, and had a wide circle of acquaintances in Edinburgh and London. He and his firm were well known in the colonies. Mr. McLaren's death was nearly as sudden as that of his brother, Mr. W. A. McLaren, a member of the bar and a Writer to the Signet, many years ago. The death of Mr. Mustard Anderson, a partner of the firm of Watt & Anderson, occurred about the same time very unexpectedly. These two men, Anderson and M'Laren, met in their club the week before their death, as they were in the weekly, sometimes daily, habit of doing. Upon shaking hands with each other, one of them mentioned to a friend who was standing by that the other did not look so well, and he should not be surprised if anything serious happened to him. The speaker died first. Mr. Anderson was not known beyond the limits of his profession, but he was the agent in a very well-known case decided in 1877, Heiton v. The Waverley Hydropathic Co.

The same week a well-known correspondent of Watt & Anderson, Mr. Thomas Dow, the town clerk of Dysart, and a partner of Thomas Dow & Son, Kirkcaldy, breathed his last. Mr. Dow was the oldest town clerk in Scotland, a native of Perth, and an intimate friend of old Barclay, the Sheriff Clerk of Fife-one of the most characteristic Scotsmen of this century -whom the procurators of Fife have cause to remember for his humour, his eccentricity, and his warm-heartedness. Barclay was, I think, at one time town clerk of Kinghorn, and when he died or retired, Mr. Dow's son, Mr. W. M. Dow, succeeded to the office. Kinghorn is about the same distance from Kirkcaldy as Dysart, but Mr. Dow, senior, always lived in Dysart, and

donbtless prolonged his life by the walk past Lord Rosslyn's policies, down the Path, and along the crooked High Street of Kirkcaldy, every morning for 50 years, to his office there. He was a man of remarkable humour, tact, and vitality. Kirkcaldy people of the past two generations remember the neat, natty man as he came smiling along the street, morning after morning, with a kindly greeting to high and low. No writer was ever more popular. A typical town clerk, too, was Mr. Dow. With what tact did he manage the turbulent elements sitting around his Council Board in the quaint old town-house of Dysart with its octagonal Dutch steeple. The demagogues might be as fierce as they pleased with each other. Mr. Dow sat perfectly unmoved through it all without the semblance of emotion or partisanship, refreshing himself now and again during the prevalence of the storm by repeated applications to his silver snuff-box. When the combatants became tired out he applied himself vigorously to the "minute," and had it down in black and white before their fury had time to rekindle. fatherly old gentleman, who died without an enemy!

Notes from London.

A kind,

THE TEMPLE, 29th December, 1892. THE frost that has set in so seasonably for the Christmas vacation has succeeded, at a considerable distance, the frost that has starved everybody out in the Law Courts for the last five or six weeks. The bitter cry of the unemployed has been swollen by voices from the Temple. "We've got no work to "do-oo-oo!" has been the refrain of many and many a lamentation uttered by all orders and conditions of the legal profession who are supposed to be practising in London, but who are much more likely, if matters do not alter, to become applicants for the charity of the Barristers' Benevolent Association.

Assizes, election petitions, and the Commission in Ireland have taken away all the common law judges but Lord Coleridge, who has been sitting alone in his glory, and occupied for a large portion of his time in settling the quarrels of two rival quack medicine vendors who, by a strange chance, found themselves engaged in distributing their panaceas from the same premises, their numbers only differentiated by the fraction between 249 and 2491, and who had taken to "conveying" each other's letters from their respective "clients" or "patients," as they were pleased to call their customers. This and a few divorce cases have comprised all going on in the Courts, with the exception of the Chancery, which, to its credit, is at least always in constant session; and all the members of the profession who appear to have been occupied are the little group of counsel with Sir Edward Clarke and Mr. Lockwood at their head, who have spent their time between the Court of the Chief Justice and that of

Mr. Justice Jeune. Since Sir Charles Russell left the Courts these two gentlemen have been ubiquitous, and it is popularly supposed that Mr. Lockwood has succeeded to the practice which Sir Charles has left behind him. At anyrate their special prominence just now has been emphasised by the fact of their apparently being the only counsel busy in London. The number of leading Q.C.'s in mufti during business hours was never so remarkable. To add to the desertion and emptiness of the Courts, only one of the Appeal Courts was sitting for some time, its members being occupied at the Judicial Committee in hearing an absurd case which had been raised as to the legality of the discharge from prison, where he was under the order of the Chief Justice of the Bahamas (a chief who has no prisoners in his court), of a person who had ventured to poke fun at the Chief Justice for certain polemical letters he had written to the local newspapers upon local municipal matters, the discharge having been granted by the Governor after application to the home authorities, but under protest by the Chief Justice.

In this state of things at the English bar, when the Chief Justice has had his heart so wrung by the woes of the profession that he has made them a speech lamenting the cessation of business, and explaining his own freedom from blame in the matter, it is comforting to hear of help coming from Scotland. An English legal paper asks, apropos of the retention of Mr. Cripps, Q.C., to represent the Town Council of Edinburgh in the arbitration proceedings relative to taking over the tramway system, "Are there no lawyers in Edinburgh sufficiently qualified to look "after the city's interests that the corporation have to employ English counsel?" This, which at first sounds like a sneer, is really a disinterested protest on behalf of the rights of the Scottish bar to be protected from the invasion of English barristers on such an occasion. It must be admitted that this is not lacking in generosity when so many Q.C.'s are loafing around with nothing to do who would be glad to go to Scotland, or elsewhere, for their expenses and a few guineas. Stranded Q.C.'s have always been a pathetic sight, but never were there so many of them wandering helplessly about as there are at present. But Scotland itself is not, as I gather from enquiries at the Parliament - House, exactly a land flowing with milk and honey for the bulk of its advocates, and our unhappy wasted "silks" cannot hope to have many opportunities like that of Mr. Cripps. Whether this latter gentleman will do what is suggested, and return his brief, remains to be seen-it is a somewhat hard thing to ask-but at all events Scottish lawyers must admit that that is a graceful view to take of what is due by courtesy to the Scottish bar. Should Mr. Comrie Thomson find that he cannot act as junior to Mr. Cripps, it would not be an enviable position for that gentleman to have driven him into returning papers which a Scottish advocate has the first claim to hold. But why has the Town Council ever allowed itself to take the step it has done? We are accustomed to look to Scotland for examples of patriotism and not for instances of Scotsmen betraying their country to the enemy.

This may be free trade, but undoubtedly it is not fair trade, even from the English point of view; and it does credit to the Gladstonian members of the Scottish bar if they are especially indignant with the Town Council, who are understood in England to be mainly of the Gladstonian persuasion. Popular indignation, as distinct from the professional kind, can hardly be supposed likely to be specially aroused over this matter; but at anyrate the citizens have some interest in taking care that English Q.C.'s should not be engaged to come to Scotland at the fancy price which we pay for their services here, a good deal of which is obtainable by them because they wear silk and not stuff. One of our devices for making law dearer than it would be naturally is this system of ours of having a special class of advocates of this kind, by which the bar is made too much of a hierarchy; and a hierarchy is always an expensive luxury. Amongst legal reforms this one of bringing our bar more nearly like that of the Scottish in respect of senior and junior counsel has met with a considerable amount of approval at various times. Many of our "stranded" QC.'s would find it for their interest if the barren dignity to which they have attained did not prohibit them from taking any but special fees, for people who have to pay such fees for "silk" naturally run after those who have special reputations, even though for the purposes of many of the cases put into their hands less showy men would do as well, if not really better. Thus are the people "fleeced," and that with their own connivance. But it is surely a slip on the part of the legal paper referred to when it says that the title of Q.C. is unknown at the Scottish bar. Probably it ought to have said as we in England know it, as it is confined, I suppose, in Scotland to those who have held one of the Crown offices. That is a privileged class which is perhaps quite sufficient. In England, whatever claims the Crown had on the services of the members of the inner bar have become merely nominal; and though still, whenever a Q.C. undertakes the defence of a prisoner, who is of course technically prosecuted by the Crown, he has to obtain a license from the Crown to do so, that, as may be supposed, is as nominal as the fee he has to pay to obtain it, and as his appellation of one of the sovereign's own counsel, learned in the law.

A former most notable figure at the bar has passed awayone of a class which is unknown in Scotland, but which flourishes in England, though changes in the criminal law and social improvements have considerably reduced its practice. I mean the exclusively criminal practitioner, whose headquarters are the Old Bailey, and whose most famous representative for nearly twenty years was Mr. Montagu Williams, Q.C., whose death has excited more popular interest than would be shown over at least twenty other deaths of Q.C.'s of the Courts in the Strand. It often appears strange to lay readers who have been accustomed to see certain prominent names in connection with great criminal trials that these well-known men do not attain to the bench and the higher offices of the profession, but most usually end in a metropolitan magistrateship, with its salary of £1500 a year.