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entitled to the praise of being a good student's manual. We are somewhat surprised, however, that the present editor should have bestowed so much labour in adding notes, supplementing, and, in innumerable instances, correcting the text, which he has preserved intact with the most religious care. Mr Mowbray is well able to edit or to write a book of far higher pretensions. We can only say that his labours have greatly increased the value of the Manual. It was at first the work of a diligent student-it is now enriched by the commentaries of a shrewd and experienced man of business.

The Month.

Outer House.-Change of the Hour of Meeting.-The members of the College of Justice have, with something approaching to unanimity, divested themselves of the ancient superstition in favour of early rising, which caused them so long to begin work at nine o'clock, an hour earlier than any other class of professional men. An Act of Sederunt has been passed giving effect to the representations of the three principal legal bodies, and enacting that the Outer House Rolls shall in future be called at ten o'clock. This cannot but be regarded as a salutary change in almost all respects. No longer must the toilsome jurisconsult labour up the Mound, cursing the Lord Ordinary and his own hard fate

Sive Aquilo radit terras, seu bruma nivalem
Interiore diem gyro trahit, ire necesse est.

We doubt not that the new hour will soon be equally accept-
able to all, even to that small minority in the Faculty of Advo-
cates to whom old habit, and perhaps some constitutional
peculiarity, had made the nine o'clock meeting dear. It would
be unfair not to acknowledge the frank generosity with which
even senior members of the bar in large practice concurred in the
movement for a change of the hour of meeting. They alone are
likely to suffer in convenience and in income by having one of the
hours of the Outer House removed from the morning to the
afternoon, when the Inner House is also sitting; and yet they, for
the most part, gracefully concurred in the evident desire of the

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majority. The open opposition which sprung up at the last moment must be attributed to the other motives we have indicated, together with a morbid fear, in some cases, of losing the Saturday half-holiday.

The Lord Advocate's Law Reforms.—We belong to no political party and have no political bias, so that the expression of our desire that Lord Advocate Patton may soon be blessed with a seat in Parliament can only be ascribed to respect for his professional character, and our interest in the cause of law reform, which he has shown himself zealous to promote. We congratulate him on having undertaken to lay before Parliament the seven bills, the subjects of which have been semi-officially announced. Many of them relate to matters which have frequently engaged our attention, but so little is known of their details, indeed we believe so little is absolutely fixed, and so little progress has as yet been made in the actual preparation of them, that minute criticism would be premature, and even detailed statements as to their contents, derived from information apparently well-founded, might eventually turn out to be misleading.

The Lord Advocate promises a revised edition of the Writs Registration Bill of last session. The work of the Select Committee of last summer enables him to bring this measure forward with a fuller knowledge of the whole subject than his predecessor ever enjoyed.

The bill to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the law of landlord's hypothec, with which, we understood, the late Solicitor-General had undertaken to deal last session, should be easily drawn and easily passed. The recommendations of the Commissioners were, it will be remembered, that all bona fide sales of grain delivered and paid for, should be protected from the hypothec; that the landlord should be entitled to sequestrate only within three months after each halfyearly portion of rent becomes due; and that all sequestrations for rent should be registered. They also advised certain declaratory enactments as to stock taken in to graze, and imported manure, &c. These reforms are certainly moderate, and the Lord Advocate, we hope, will have no difficulty in getting the bill passed.

The third bill is one to consolidate and amend the law as to nuisances and the prevention of contagious diseases.

The fourth is to deal with one of the most crying grievances

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in the administration of justice in Scotland, the exorbitant expense and delay of actions of accounting. When the proper time comes, we shall probably have a good deal to say as to the enormities of remits to accountants. At present we need only state, that the Lord Advocate intends to provide for the appointment of one or more official accountants, to whom the investigation of disputed accounts will be committed. No change is contemplated in the forms of pleading in such actions.

By far the most important changes to be proposed, and those which will excite the liveliest controversy, relate to Sheriff Court procedure and the mode of appeal from the judgments of Sheriffs. Here the Lord Advocate has fallen into the hands of the shopkeepers; but it is only fair to say that he means to give them their extended small debt jurisdiction only within limits and under conditions, which may prevent some of the abuses and difficulties which would inevitably follow its unqualified extension to L50. The new provision is to apply only to trade debts, or, as they are sometimes called, "book debts." These will be defined to mean all debts falling within the triennial prescription. We understand that cases up to L50 are to be brought into Court by an ordinary small debt summons or plaint; that any defence must be stated at first calling; that proof will be led, if necessary, at an adjourned diet then fixed, and that the Sheriff will be required to pronounce thereupon articulate findings in law, which shall be the only record in the cause, except in the case aftermentioned. In short, the Sheriff's judgment is to be equivalent to a "case stated," such as we have often advocated in these pages. The Sheriff-Substitute's findings in fact are to be final, but an appeal to the Sheriff-Depute and the Court of Session is to be competent (1) upon his findings in law, and (2) upon the findings in fact, so far as they depend upon or are mixed up with his view of the law. It is proposed to introduce a somewhat novel remedy in the latter case. The Sheriff or the Court of Session, having no record of the evidence, cannot find differently, cannot alter or reverse the Sheriff-Substitute's judgment; but they are empowered to remit for a new trial. We venture to think that this will be altogether nugatory, unless the new trial be before a different judge, and this we think should be imperative, and not optional to the Court of appeal. The principal Sheriff should always be judge and jury in the second trial. The idea is evidently borrowed from the system of jury trial; but

when a verdict has been overturned the issue is always re-tried before a fresh jury. Unless this analogy be fully carried out in the Lord Advocate's new scheme, we can expect nothing but failure. It is provided that the appeal which may be so taken shall be in a short form, and shall be either to a Lord Ordinary, whose judgment shall be final, or to one of the Divisions. The cumbrous advocation is to be entirely abolished, but the method of review by suspension is left untouched.

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It is to be made competent in the new procedure, in cases under £50, for either party who desires a review upon the facts to have the whole evidence taken down at his own expense by a sworn shorthand writer; and we presume this provision will be made applicable to cases in the ordinary Court, and not merely to cases where the debt sued for is less than L.50.

Besides the five measures which we have enumerated, the Lord Advocate proposes, by another bill, to deprive Presbyteries of their jurisdiction in respect to the building and repair of churches and manses, and the designation of glebes, and to transfer it to the Sheriff-Depute. Prima facie, no one can object to the substitution of one presumably trained and impartial judge for a multitudinous Court of presumably biassed and utterly unjudicial judges.

In the interest of jurymen and witnesses, it is proposed, by a seventh bill, to provide that all persons who shall be remitted for trial to the Court of Justiciary, and who shall be likely to plead guilty, shall be brought up to a "pleading diet" of the High Court at Edinburgh. Why not let such prisoners be called up to plead before the Sheriff? This might injure the symmetry of our judicial institutions; but the transmission of prisoners is expensive. The measure, as it stands, almost looks like a step towards the abolition of Circuit Courts; for it may be discovered by a law reformer of the next decade that, when prisoners are once brought to Edinburgh, it is nearly or quite as cheap, and a great deal more convenient and pleasant for judges and counsel to try them there. And most prisoners will probably choose to vary the monotony of life in jail by a trip to Edinburgh, whether or not they really mean to plead guilty when there.

Upon the whole, the Lord Advocate has promised a very excellent sheaf of bills; for, though there are many other things which we wish to see done-such as the restitution of those im

portant clauses of the Summary Procedure Bill of which the Duke of Buccleuch robbed the country—yet law reforms are not so easily achieved that we should hesitate to take any good thing that is offered.

Practice in granting Augmentations of Stipend.—The case of the Minister of Kilbirnie v. The Heritors, decided last Teind Court day, may be of some importance in ruling the future practice in regard to augmentations where the existence of free teind is disputed. In this case it had long been assumed that the teinds were exhausted, and the present process of augmentation was brought after the lapse of fifty years, on the discovery of an alleged flaw in a valuation. The Court in the circumstances sisted the process to allow the minister to bring a declarator. It was contended for the minister that the proper course, in accordance with the recent practice of the Court, was to grant the augmentation, leaving it to be ascertained in the process of locality whether there was or was not free teind. But the Court refused to do so, because if such a course were adopted the heritors founding on valuations might be obliged to pay the augmented stipend, perhaps for thirty years, upon an interim scheme of locality, to which they had no opportunity of objecting; and if eventually it should be found, on the final scheme being prepared and objected to, that there was no free teind, they might have no redress against the minister. This decision seems to lay down a very important principle for guidance in future cases, and one which has perhaps been somewhat lost sight of in late years. The Court has hitherto granted "fishing augmentations" on very little prima facie evidence of free teind. Minister of Bathgate v. Heritors, Dec. 9, 1863, 2 Macph. 224. Nay, in the Minister of Morvern v. Heritors, Nov. 22, 1865, 38 Sc. Jur. 49, the Court "granted an augmentation, leaving the minister to establish in the locality the existence of unexhausted teinds." The Lord President observed that "the former practice had been to grant an augmentation without considering whether or not the minister had made out a prima facie case of free teinds, that that was the most expedient course, and that the Court would not in future entertain that question." There has certainly been a very remarkable and inconvenient fluctuation of opinion on this matter of late years. It seems, however, to indicate a tendency to a change for the better, that the Court has refused to grant an augmentation where the objection stated to the decree of valuation was admittedly as

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