Lennox, J., at p. 375 says: "The questions of law arising in this action are of very great importance, and it is in the public interest that a judicial interpretation of the B. N. A. Act touching these questions and binding on all the provincial legislatures should be obtained without unnecessary delay."

Meredith, C. J. C. P., at p. 380, says: "There is a good deal to be said on each side of the question."

It is nowhere suggested that a Judge as such ought not to resist unconstitutional taxation.

BY THE WAY.

THE SEDUCTIVE OFFICE SYSTEM.

The first stage of a lawyer's existence during Long Vacation is that of serene contemplation; which in the vulgar is termed "Lazying." But as old irritations become ironed out by the mellow warmth of the summer sun and vitality returns Mr. Lawyer becomes restless. There is a recrudescence of ambition which, like the stirring ambition in other walks of life, often leads to a resumption of activity in dangerous directions. The afflicted one becomes possessed of what the denouncer of Phillip of Macedon called "Philopragmasune," the love of doing things. In the absence of other attachable things the attention becomes dir. ected to one's own law-office, its files, forms, dockets and debris. And just here we may observe that the allegorical apples of antiquity (Eden and Paris) were charming symbolisms of the temptation known as office-system.

A visit to the office of an old country practitioner fills us with the pride of system. We find methods of tape and tradition, the sedulous and turtle-paced engrossing clerk instead of the instantaneous and inaccurate typiste, the carefully negotiated interview and consultation instead of the brisk and equivocal telephone conversation. In our exultant hearts we say we have surpassed these effete and doddering methods of the old land.

Also, where our public, grumbling and bargainhunting, pays us a dollar with reluctance the old country solicitor collects a sovereign (and the barrister condescends to accept a guinea) from awe-imbued and admiring worshippers of legal solemnity. Our new world systems have made hidalgos of the lawproud and poor.

Or he installs a bookkeeper who devises so highly civilized a system of accounting that when Mr. Lawyer wants to find where he stands he gives the bookkeeper a vacation and puts in an auditor.

There are enterprises that devise business systems, and some of these have revised a sufficient number of law-offices to be through with the chief blunders of law-office organization. On the whole it might pay a lawyer to stay on his vacation and subsidise one of these concerns to invent the new system. Which is much as if a man should hire an architect. He gets a better house; but he misses the fun of creation and that pride of mental parentage which says "a poor thing, but mine own."

The exacting forms of return which lawyers have to send in with regard to income under the various statutory schemes of war-taxation have led many of the profession to an involuntary recasting of their books. Formerly the lawyer felt that if he kept track of meum and tuum, his own and the clients; and held them sufficiently separate, the rest was nobody's business. The present law makes for Bolshevism in the profession. When the lawyer is made to see for the first time how much of his intake goes for books and paper rather than boots and provisions, his old time contentment with existing institutions will slip a few cogs; and he may lose that happy-golucky disposition that has made the typical Canadian lawyer a good spender and a poor custodian and investor of his own private funds. He may become as remorselessly greedy as . . . . .

1

The reader may here supplement, according to his views, the words "the capitalistic plunderer' 64 or the insatiable labour agitator" or "the honest farmer." Or, if he has no modern mental disturbance but simply adds law to old-fashioned common sense, he may add the words "the victim of an expropriation."

CRIMINAL LAW AND A LIGHT HORSE MAGIS

TRATE.

Principles of the Criminal Law, by Seymour F. Harris, B.C.L., M.A. (Oxon.); 13th Edition, by A. M. Wilshire, M.A., LL.B.; Sweet & Maxwell, London; The Carswell Co., Ltd., Toronto. Recollections of a Police Magistrate, by Col. Geo. T. Denison, beginning in Canadian Magazine for July, 1919.

There have been many contributions to the subject of Criminal Law, but when a lawyer is reaching for the principles and not for the notes to a particular section in the Code he harks back to Harris. The 13th edition differs from the later editions of many other valuable books. For with age there is a tendency to run to a gouty and dropsical bulk, with the treatise disappearing in an adiposity of cases. The present editor of Harris has trained down and eliminated the obsolete matter of previous editions. The book has become at once more up-to-date and more readable. Always indispensable it is now more useable.

Coincidently with the issue of so scientific and learned a work as Harris we have had a contribution to Canadian literature which shows how all this science and learning may be dispensed with and the law of crime simplified as by a revolutionary tribunal. Col. Geo. T. Denison has exercised for the last forty years a control in the Police Court of Toronto, as unique as that of Diaz in Mexico. He is the Dean of the Aristocracy of Crime, makes for himself the rules of graduation and confers the degree. He says: "Sometimes in my club they will complain to me about the motor laws and the way in which they are administered.

"I always close the discussion by saying: "Thanks to a kind Providence I have nothing whatever to do with motor cases. I deal with the aristocracy of crime, with murderers, highway robbers, forgers, embezzellers and all the highest class of criminals. I have nothing to do with the petty offenders who don't remove their snow or drive their motors too fast or commit other frivolous little offences, and I am very thankful, for my customers are much more pleasant to deal with; they rarely complain or bear any ill-will.' ''

Visitors from other countries come to our Toronto Police Court as to a spectacle-the same visitors as frequent Juarez when there is a bull-fight. Most lawyers shun and cause their clients to shun this Court. And this is not because the Colonel is not honest, fearless and incorruptible-he is all these things-but because he is tranquilly and imperturbably lawless. We all knew this before, but did not like to say it. And had we wished to say it we should have fallen short of saying it half so well as the Colonel himself has written it.

We have said he is lawless. Now Criminal law, as any other law, is founded on precedent no less than on enactment. Listen to Col. Denison: "I never follow precedents unless they agree with my views. The men practising in my Court have known for years back that there was no use quoting precedents to me. It is very rare that cases are exactly alike, and the decision in one case might be right, while in another apparently like it, it would be unjust.

To save time I used to chaff lawyers wanting to read them, saying: 'Why read me another judge's opinion. If it agrees with my view, what is the object? If it takes a different view why should I follow another man's mistakes?' Sometimes I have had a lawyer quote some very prominent writer on some branch of law, as, for example, Russell on Crimes. After he had read the paragraph I would say: "Is that Mr. Russell's opinion?" "Yes," would be the reply. "Well my opinion is different." I was once told that he was the greatest authority on the subject. My reply was, "Well, I am sure he has not half as much authority in this Court as I have."

Magistrates, no less than judges, are expected to decide cases on the weight of evidence. The tribunal that disregards the weight of evidence is a lawless tribunal. Colonel Kirke, of Kirke's Lambs, Colonel Claverhouse and other distinguished cavalrymen have made themselves famous in this respect: their decisions were sudden and execution immediate. The dis