Legacy-Vested.-Where there is a gift to children, with a direction to pay and divide the fund at twenty-one, the gift is vested, and the period of payment merely postponed; but where the whole gift consists in the direction to pay or divide at twenty-one, the period of vesting is the time of payment or division (per V. C. Wood, in Re Theed, 29 Law Tim. R. 292).

NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS.

LEX U. The mere reading of a number of volumes is no test of progress. The point is, what do you comprehend on the review of a day's reading? It is unfortunate you have no one with whom to discuss the different topics, but you must strive more and more to accomplish your purpose by meditation and frequent re-perusals. There is no occasion for despair, except you are incurably idle; and in that case you had better turn to some other mode of living.

J. T.-We are obliged by the intimation, and will avail ourselves of it. There should be a debating society in every place where two three articled clerks are to be found. Locke on Govern

or

TIM. The practice of public speaking is one that should be cultivated by every professional person, but you must take care not to be led too much away from legal topics, and frequently in such societies there is danger of picking up bad companions, and of getting into evil ways. There are several clubs of the kind you speak of, but they are mostly, if not wholly, held at taverns, &c.

S:-The " Key" does not give the old answers, but according to the new practice. There is nothing to mislead. Mr. Holthouse's Dictionary is a very useful one, as well as moderate in price.

B. The dictionary just mentioned, if wish you for a concise work. We have not yet seen the new edition of Stephen, as the publishers conceive, we suppose, that it does not now require any recommendation or notice.

LIBRARY.-We will insert a list of ERRATA in the next Number of the "Library," which will complete the "First Book." We are obliged for communications, and shall be glad of any future ones. At p. 167 French v. F. should be 26 L. J., and not vol. 28.

LEA. The proposed examination will not affect clerks under articles, and therefore you need not be under any apprehension, The questions are printed. Your answers will be better appreciated if made as concise as possible.

H. H. S.-We have considered the subject, but do not see our way clearly. At present the "LIBRARY" is not supported as it should be, and we do not therefore feel encouraged to venture on anything else.

M. A.-Three years' service would be effectual. Practical knowledge is essential, and you should make up your mind to go through the necessary course of office duties. There is nothing in them to prevent your also reading at least after office hours. We would not advise you to go to the bar, as that is overmuch stocked, both with men of intellect and men of connections. Of course you might get on, but it is more of a lottery than is the case with the other branch of the profession.

S. E.-Addison on Contracts, or Chitty on Contracts, would answer your purpose. We shall next month finish the "FIRST Book," and in April commence with "PRINCIPLES OF THE COMMON LAW." The new edition of Hayes' Short Forms has not yet appeared.

8 pp., including paper, &c. (per 50 copies) £2 158. From which a discount of TWENTY PER CENT. is deducted for payment within a month.

A larger or smaller number of pages at a proportionate price T. DAY begs to call attention both to the Prices and Style in this Department of his Business, and to announce that he possesses every facility for executing the largest as well as the smallest Orders. Estimates on the most liberal scale furnished to Authors desirous of bringng their works before the public.

LITHOGRAPHIC PRINTING.

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COURSES OF LAW STUDIES

VENDORS AND PURCHASERS

SUMMARY OF DECISIONS:-Conveyancing and EquityEquity Practice-Common Law-Common Law PracBankruptcy - County

tice Probate and Divorce Courts Criminal Law

REAL PROPERTY AMENDMENT ACTS...

THE NEW SCALE OF ALLOWANCE TO PROSECUTORS AND

THE SLAVE TRADE

...

THE LATE LAW APPOINTMENTS

PAGE 325-328 328-331

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331-349 349-351 351-353

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ITTLETON'S TENURES: with Notes, and Copious Questions on the Text and Notes. New Edition. The mode in which this work has been edited is, in the first place, by omitting the portions quite obsolete; in the next place, by slightly altering LITTLETON'S Text, where some partial change has been made in the law since Littleton's time; and, in the third place, by adding notes to very many of the sections, noticing the changes made by statutes, and in some cases stating recent decisions of importance, and, in the last place, by furnishing a most complete series of questions on the texts and notes.

N EXPOSITION OF THE LAND TAX: Its Assessment and Collection; showing the subjects exempt from the Tax; mode of granting relief from the Double Land Tax assessed on the Estates of Roman Catholics; and Rights and Advantages conferred by the Redemption Acts, with References to the reported Cases in the Courts of Law and Equity, bearing on the sph ject; and an Introductory Sketch of the History of the Land Ta. By MARK A BOURDIŇ, of the Inland Revenue Office, Somerset House.-Price Half-a-Crown, or sent free for thirty-six stamps.

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LAW OF PROPERTY AMENDMENT BILL.

Condition of re-entry, only partial dispensation-Omission to insure relieved against-Release of part j land from judgment—Uses of lands fully executed— Execution of powers by deed-Payments to tenants for life—Informal execution of will.—The very important measure of Lord St. Leonard's, having the above title, has passed through the second reading, and has been sent into committee to be discussed and no doubt amended, if not improved. As our readers may like to know the subjects proposed to be effected, we will here shortly state the substance of the measure as appears from the speech of Lord St. Leonard's in proposing the second reading. His Lordship said that one of the objects of the bill was to alter the law as it had been laid down in the wellknown case called Dunpor's case, reported 4 Coke's Rep. 120, and Cro. Eliz. 816. According to that case, if a lease were granted on a condition and the landlord licensed a breach of the condition, the condition would be gone for ever, and could never be enforced again. He proposed that in future the licence to break a condition should only extend to the particular breach, and should not operate as an entire release of the condition. Other provisions related to the covenants to insure contained in leases. At present, if a lease contained a covenant to insure, with a right of re-entry for breach, then, if the covenant were broken, the landlord might re-enter and avoid the lease, although no loss had been incurred. He proposed to enable the Court of Chancery to relieve against the forfeiture thus incurred, on payment to the landlord of double the amount of the insurance money which ought to have been paid, with interest at 5 per cent. It had now become usual, on the sale of leases containing a covenant to insure, to insert a condition of sale, to the effect that the production of the receipt for the last portion of rent due, and of the production of the policy of assurance then afoot, should be considered sufficient to constitute a good title. Nothing, however, could be more unsafe than to take property under such a title, for if it had been at any time before uninsured, and the landlord had given the subsequent receipt for rent in ignorance of the breach of covenant, he would be able to recover the property from a purchaser. He now proposed to enact that when the purchaser was not aware of the breach, he should not be liable to be disturbed. An opinion had been intimated, and it had been erroneously supposed to have been decided, that the days of grace were not given in policies of assurance so as to be binding upon the assurers. Most of the offices had, indeed, issued circulars stating that they

admitted the days of grace to bind them. He had lived long enough, however, not to trust directors, and he, therefore, proposed to make it imperative ,upon them to allow days of grace when they were inserted in the policy. The directors of the Law Life Office stated they conceived the clause which he had drawn up with this object to be perfectly fair both to the assurers and assured; but if any directors of any office entertained a different opinion, he should be perfectly ready to listen to their objections. Following the precedent of the law in Ireland, we propose to enact that a release of a part of the land from a judgment shall not operate beyond the actual portion released. There was also some difficulty and inconvenience in the existing law regarding the possession of the estate and the use of it. He proposed to enact, that after the conveyance had been executed, every use and right shall be executed by statute as they arise, without reference to any seisin. He proposed to place the law as regards the execution of powers by deed on exactly the same footing as the law now stood in regard to the execution by will. He proposed that property and power should be placed on the same footing, and without the slightest difference. If a trustee should sell an estate, having powers to do so, and by mistake certain benefits were conveyed to the tenant for life which he ought not to possess, he (Lord St. Leonard's) proposed, if it were shown that those benefits were conferred by mere mistake, and that no fraud was intended, that the estate, under such circumstances, should not be taken away from the innocent party. who had paid his money, but rather that compensation should be given to the individual entitled to it equivalent to the injury inflicted. He proposed, therefore, that where the payment had been made to the tenant for life, and by a manifest mistake the money was paid to the tenant for life which ought to have gone to the trustees, the error might be remedied without any loss to the party otherwise damuified, in the same manner as if the money had been received by the trustees instead of the tenant for life. In regard to the execution of a will, if the court should be of opinion that there had been no fraud in the execution of the document, but that it had been executed merely for convenience in a manner different from that pointed out by the existing law, he proposed that it should be held to be a valid will. He proposed, in fact, that the acknowledgment by the testator of the will itself should be taken as an acknowledgment of his signature to it.

LIST OF CORRESPONDENTS.-The following is the only addition to the lists before published, ante, pp. 10, xiv., xx., xxiv.-namely, Mr. Henry Horsell, of Wootton, Bassett.

RAILWAYS LIMITING THEIR LIABILITY FOR DAMAGE TO HORSES, &c., CARRIED BY THEM.

We have shortly stated elsewhere the recent case of M'Manus v. Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company (6 Week. Rep. 330) decided in the Court of Exchequer. The decision involves a principle so important that it cannot be too widely known, and, if it can be supported, will certainly lay the public open to very grave risks. It was decided that a railway company, by a notice sufficiently comprehensive printed on the back of their tickets, can protect themselves from all responsibility resulting from damage arising from the defects of their own trucks for the carriage of live stock. This is shifting the responsiblity from the right shoulders; it is throwing the obligation of vigilance on the wrong party. If this is to remain as the exposition of what the law is on the subject, it is obvious that no care can protect the public from loss, and that one inducement to companies to keep their rolling stock for the conveyance of animals in a state of efficiency will be withdrawn. As appears from the report of the case, the facts were these :-M⭑Manus delivered some horses at Liverpool to the employées of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway to be forwarded to York; he paid the rates charged by the company, and received a ticket with the following endorsed memorandum :-"N.B.-This ticket is issued subject to the owner's undertaking all risks of conveyance, loading, or unloading, whatsoever, as the company will not be responsible for any injury or damage howsoever caused, occurring to any live stock of any description travelling upon the Yorkshire and Lancashire Railway, or in their vehicles." The truck into which the horses were put was insufficient for their safe carriage, so much so that a hole was made in the bottom of it during the journey, which resulted in the injury to the horses. The Court of Exchequer decided that the memorandum on the back of the ticket operated so as to protect the company, and to throw the entire loss incurred through the dangerous state of the truck upon the sender of the horses.

The question is not, was the memorandum endorsed on the ticket, per se, sufficiently comprehensive to admit of this decision? but it is, shall a railway company be enabled by such a memorandum to protect itself from losses arising exclusively from the negligence of its own servants? shall a company be entitled to force an individual into a compact that that individual shall alone be responsible for any damage arising from the defective condition of their own rolling stock? Now a railway company is a monopolist, invested by the Legislature with the exclusive privilege of making and maintaining a line of rails between two given points. No person no other company, can interfere with this right, or make a line connecting the same places, without the special sanction of Parliament. Every railway bill that is passed is passed in derogation of rights of the public at large; it is, in fact, the rights of the whole community delegated to the individuals that constitute the company; but the company is invested with an exclusive exercise of such rights solely because the country ultimately benefited by such

delegation. Well, then, we may ask, if a company is clothed with certain exclusive privileges, is it unfettered by any correlative obligations? If it be, one would think that no obligation could transcend that of keeping its vehicles in a state of adequate repair of affording to the public, of whose rights it enjoys the exclusive exercise, an effectual guarantee that its engines, trucks, rails, and everything necessary to effect safe transit are in a sound condition. This decision negatives this obligation; it proclaims that railway companies owe no such duty to the public, or at all events that they can securely evade that duty by printing on the backs of their tickets a form o vords framed by some astute lawyer. Perhaps i may be said that if any man sends stock by a railway it is inequitable that he should do so upon any terms the company please, as if he does not like their terms he need not deal with them; but a railway company and an individual do not stand on equal terms. The position of a railway company as a monopolist of the means of rapid transit enables it to force any conditions, however unreasonable, upon individuals. So well is this recognised, that Parliament invariably lays companies under certain conditions as to their traffic. Thus every company is obliged to run what is termed parliamentary trains; trains, not for the conveyance of members of Parliament, but trains which the law requires to be at a low rate of mileage.

Then no vigilance on the part of the sender of live stock by rail can protect him from loss, if not ruin. How is he to know the condition of the trucks? Can he select those into which his stock are to be put? Would any railway company tolerate such interference? Then, as Chief Baron Pollock is reported to have remarked, what regards the truck "is equally applicable to the engine, the rails, turning points, and everything necessary to the safe carriage of the animals." Is the sender of stock to call for the engineer's last report on the state of the rails; or is he to employ an engineer to give his opinion as to the condition of the permanent way? The thing is too absurd. It demands that the sender shall exercise his vigilance, and that the company, by a memorandum which they choose to put on their tickets, shall be relieved from all loss resulting from their own criminal negligence. Is it to be tolerated that the loss arising from the defective state of the rails is to be borne by the sender? Is the company to be allowed to let their engines go out of repair, and yet not to be liable for the damage occasioned by such misconduct? This would reduce the public to the unfair alternative of being obliged either, on the one hand, to accept the responsibility of risks that they cannot by any possibility estimate or avert, or, on the other, refrain from sending stock to market by the most rapid means of transit.

MOOT POINTS.

No. 30.-Mortgage-Fixtures-Registering Bills of Sale, and Warrants of Attorney. A., a brewer, is about to lend D., a victualler, a sum of money, to secure which, and also any balance of account he may owe A., it is proposed

D. should mortgage his lease of certain premises, and should include in such mortgage a large quantity of fixtures he has placed in the premises since the lease was granted. Will it be necessary to register this mortgage under the Bills of Sale Act?

Also, in order to secure possession of the premises (the mortgagor being in possession), it is proposed to take from him a warrant of attorney in ejectment, which warrant has a defeasance, which recites the mortgage, and states that the warrant is given for further securing the payment of the amount. Does this defeasance and recital make the action to be be brought on the warrant "personal" within the meaning of the act for the registration of warrants of attorney? and if so, must it be finally attested and registered?

Lastly, ought such warrant of attorney to be stamped with an ad valorem, a 5s., or a 35s. stamp?

W. BARTLETT

No. 31.-Mortgage-Priority-Notice.

A. B., in the year 1844, mortgages his estate to C. D. for £800.

In the year 1846 he mortgages the same estate to E. F. for £500, the same solicitor being employed for both mortgagees-viz., C. D., and E. F.

In the year 1850 he mortgages the same estate to G. H. for £400, who omitted to give any notice to the first or second mortgagees, or their solicitor, of his incumbrance.

In the year 1854 A. B. further mortgages the same estate to J. K. for £500, who gave due notice to the solicitor of the first and second mortgagees of his incumbrance, which said solicitor witnessed the execution of the said mortgage by the mortgagor A. B., neither J. K. or the solicitor to the first and second mortgagees having, at that time, any knowledge whatever of the third mortgage to G. H.-in fact, it is only lately that it has come to their knowledge.

The estate is supposed to be worth about £1,700. Consequently G. H. or J. K. must lose his money so advanced, the mortgagor, A. B., having no other property. Under these circumstance, will not J. K. (who gave proper notice of his incumbrance to the solicitor to the first and second mortgagees) take in preference to G. H. (who omitted to give any notice of his incumbrance), though G. H. be the prior mortgagee. R. J. B.

No. 32. Liability of Principal for not giving

any son of B. Within such a reasonable time after A.'s death, as to make it almost a certainty that he was in ventre sa mère at the time of his death, a son is born. In this case would the remainder take effect in such son or be void? Is not the rule in Shelley's case to the effect that a remainder is capable of vesting in a child who is in ventre sa mère at the time of the determination of the particular estate? AN ADMIRING Reader.

P.S.-Please refer to some authority on the point. No. 34.-Public Nuisance.

A gun committee have erected a stand some three feet in height, and placed on it a twenty-four pounder, being one of the guns taken in the late war with

Russia.

The stand is erected just opposite the window of a house, and obstructs the light very much.

It is generally considered a nuisance, as it is placed just in the principal part of the Market Street,

A public meeting has been held, in order, if possible, to get it removed, but all to no purpose. It is clearly a public nuisance, and generally considered so by the inhabitants.

The overseers have given their consent in writing. A vestry was held, and one overseer was present and signed, and the other signed afterwards.

What will be the best plan to adopt in order to its removal? Perhaps some of your numerous correH. H. spondents can inform me.

NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS.

A. B. Four hours a day would suffice, if care be taken, to digest what is read. You should read some works on equity and common law principles and practice, and upon conveyancing, unless you can wait for our volumes. On the 15th Common Law Principles will be commenced. You appear to have read more than usual in seven months, but, unless you have fully comprehended the subjects, no real progress will have been made.

AN ADMIRING READER.-We fear you are confounding the rule; a posthumous child may take a remainder limited in any instrument whatever when it vests (10 & 11 Will. 3, c. 16; Bassett v. Bassett, 8 Vin. Abr. 87; 3 Atk. 203).

QUERIST.-The Consolidation Act has been amended, and £150 assets must be shown (17 & 18 Vic. c. 119). You cannot be examined in Trinity Term, 1859, unless you can make out a very special case, as a partnership, &c.

H. D.-We do not know of any such list. Most persons can give a pretty accurate guess what books

are meant.

S.-We do not see any object in making the proposed alteration. The degree must not be a stale one.

H. J. C.-We think if you read the volumes mentioned it will be sufficient for your purpose. It is uncertain when the other volumes of Jarman's Bythewood will be published. The old edition of Davidson would be serviceable, though the new one is preferable.