Contract for sale of patent rights-"Pro- Gift-Donee-Estate - Liability-Customs Marketable security issued by foreign com- Substituted service-Written demand for cohabi- - New succession-Contract for valuable con- Policy of insurance-Assignee-Account Trade fixture-Machinery supplied under hiring Trade mark-Magnolia-Geographical name- - " Trade name-Imitation - Name of article- Proper description of article-Calculated to - Purchase of estates as-Subsequent breaches Vaccination notice-Service of-Sufficiency Partnership-Judgment in action for disso- - Vexatious legal proceedings instituted prior to Will- - - Construction Construction-Executory devise on death of Construction Gift to the children of Construction-Illegitimate child-Nephew Construction Settlement Referential Construction-Tenant for life and remainder- Construction-Tenant for life and remainder- Construction-Tenant for life and remainder- Gift for life-Power for tenant for life to Hotchpot clause-Construction-Settlement Precatory trust-Gift beneficial or in trust Probate-Foreign mortgage (Lord Sudeley Tenant for life and remaindermen-Absolute Alexander, H. R. T., 118 Amphlett, Richard Holmden, 68 Andrew, William Henry, 21 Atchley, Hy. Wilmot Wickham, Atherley-Jones, Llewellyn-Archer, Atkinson, E. Tindal, Q.C., 136 Bagenal, Philip Henry, 43 Bompas, Henry Mason, Q.C., 21 Carrington, John Worrell, C.M G, PROMOTIONS AND APPOINTMENTS. Darling, Charles J., Q.C., M.P., Davey, Lord, 118 Elgood, Edgar J., 346 Ellison, Theo. Walter, 136, 164 Day, Walter H., 90, 221 Gates, P. C., Q.C, 90 Henwood, Thomas Walkom, 281 Hilleary, George Edward, 136 Ho kinson, Alfred, Q.C., M. P., 43 Jauralde, John William Peter, 496 Knowles, M. R, 399 Lawford, Herbert Bowring, 302 Littlewood, John Whittaker, 221 Logan, Robert Henry, 281 Nisbet, Edward Gibson, 589 Roe, Hon. Charles Arthur, 519 Smith, A. V. Lucie, 43 Spencer, Percy, 399 Standring, Henry, 253 Stedman, Reginald J. M., 69 Stevens, Frederick, 253 Stokes, Chas. Wm. Re s, 424 Strachan, John, 68 Street, Allen Peter, 519 Talbot, William Henry, 69 Terry, Percival, 281 Wade, Charles Stewart Douglas, Walton, Joseph, Q.C., 43 Williams, James, D.C L., 164 THE COURTS AND COURT PAPERS. Admiralty-Order abolishing fees on sums paid House of Lords appeals, 21, 305, 497 Chancery witness actions, 191, 568 Circuits of the judges-autumn, 22; winter, 233; County Court rules, December 1896, 95; March County Courts Act 1888-Order as to fees, 282 Liverpool and Manchester District Registries- Northern Circuit notice, 258 Orders of court as to transfer of cases, 282, Stannaries Court (Abolition) Act 1896-Order, 305; rules, 371; fees, 449 1 To Readers and Correspondents. All communications must be authenticated by the name and address of the writer not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. Anonymous communications are invariably rejected. All communications intended for the Editorial Department should, in order to prevent delay, be addressed to the "EDITOR OF THE LAW TIMES." Advertisements, orders for papers, &c., should be kept distinct, and addressed to the Publisher, Mr. HORACE Cox,Law Times" Office, Windsor House, Bream's-buildings, E.O. NOTES OF RECENT DECISIONS NOT YET REPORTED 10 OUR LITERARY COLUMN.-Stories from the Law Reports LAW LIBRARY 12 13 238 ... 236 SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE THE KENT COUNTY COUNCIL (apps.) 245 Courts PROCEEDINGS AFFECTING THE PROFESSION Person ordering materials for works GOODSON . THE SUNBURY GAS CONSUMERS' COMPANY LIMITED.-Highways-Public nuisance-Breach of statutory duty-Special damageRight of action.... 247 21 Vol. CII.-No. 2797. བསལ NOW READY. PATERSON'S PRACTICAL STATUTES of the SESSION 1896 (59 & 60 Viet.), with Introductions, Notes, Tables of Statutes repealed and Subjects altered, Lists of Local and Personal and Private Acts, and a Copious Index. By J. S. COTTON, Barrister-at-Law. Forty-eighth issue of the Series. Cloth, 108.; half-calf, 128.; calf, 13s. 1896. N.B.-The Vols. from 1858 to 1895 may also be had. Price 3s. a volume if complete set is taken HORACE COX, "Law Times" Office, Windsor House, Bream's-buildings, E.C. The Law and the Lawyers. THE new Bishop of London studied Law and Modern History at Oxford, which no doubt accounts for his rapid rise in the Church. Archbishop MAGEE, in one of his letters, says that he preached in Dublin to an audience including three eminent judges, "whom I duly instructed in the ultimate principles of law." THE same witty prelate, when struggling with distinguished lawyers on the subject of Irish Church disestablishment, expressed the hope that "whatever fate befalls the Irish Church, it may not die that most ignominious and agonising of all deaths-asphyxiation by lawyers." RELIGIOUS principles, of course, have nothing to do with the selection of judges, but it is the fact that recent appointments to the County Court Bench have included two promiThe latter nent Dissenters, Mr. WADDY and Mr. BOMPAS. now fills the appointment held by Mr. GATES, who has just resigned. The Bar Council, as representing the whole Bar, has passed a resolution that every Recorder raised to the Mr. EOMPAS is Bench should resign his Recordership. Recorder of Plymouth and Devonport, which we apprehend, in deference to professional opinion, he will give up. ON Saturday last Mr. Justice NORTH completed his fifteenth year of judicial service. There are now ten members of the English Judicial Bench entitled to retiring pensions-Lord ESHER (1868), Mr. Baron POLLOCK (1873), Lord Justice LINDLEY (1875), Mr. Justice HAWKINS (1876), Lord Justice LOPES (1876), Lord Justice KAY (1881), Mr. Justice CAVE (1881), Mr. Justice CHITTY (1881), Mr. Justice MATHEW (1881), and Mr. Justice NORTH (1881). By a curious statutory provision the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE of ENGLAND, on the completion of fifteen years service as Chief Justice, is entitled to a retiring pension of six-sevenths of his The late Lord Chief Justice COLERIDGE judicial income. was, at the time of his death in 1894, one-and-twenty years on the Bench; he had, however, only been Lord Chief Justice since 1880, and would have been entitled to retire not on six-sevenths but on two-thirds of his official income. Or the Irish Judiciary, which, exclusive of the LORD CHANCELLOR, consists of nineteen members, no fewer than six are entitled to retire on pensions of two-thirds of their official income-Judge MILLER (1867), the Vice-Chancellor (Mr. CHATTERTON, 1867), the President of the Probate and Matrimonial Division (Mr. WARREN, 1868), Lord Justice BARRY (1872), the Lord Chief Baron (Mr. PALLES, 1874), and Lord Justice FITZGIBBON (1878). THAT Irish judges are not overburdened by work may be inferred from the fact that Sir PETER O'BRIEN, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, was enabled on Tuesday last week, which was the second day of the Michaelmas Sittings, to have "a day off," which he spent at the opening meet of the Kildare Hunt. Irish judges in the past have in some instances been noted disciples of Nimrod. Thus Mr. RICHARD PENNEFATHER, who was appointed a Baron of the Irish Court of Exchequer in 1821, was deprived of the sight of one eye by an accident in the hunting-field. He was warned by leading oculists at the time that the sight of the other eye was much endangered. The Baron prepared for total blindness, with which he was subsequently afflicted, by cultivating his memory, and continued to discharge his duties on the Bench for many years while wholly blind. He only retired a very few years before his death, which took place in 1859. A FEATURE in the Judicial Statistics for 1894, which discourages too much satisfaction with the growth of County Court business, is the number of successful appeals from decisions of the inferior courts. Of 222 cases argued, ninety appeals were allowed-more than one-third of the whole. THE decline of the business of the Mayor's Court is one of the singular events in our judicial history. Notwithstanding that it has no less than three judges available, viz., the Recorder Sir CHARLES HALL, the Common Serjeant Sir FORREST FULTON, and Mr. ROXBURGH, its records show a continuous falling off. This was remarkable in 1894, prior to which year there had been a steady rise, the figures being (number of actions, &c.), average in the years 1888-92 13,277, 1893 11,909, and 1894 11,114. Reports from the Court do not lead to the expectation of any improvement, but rather the reverse. WHEN a notice is officially issued, it ought to be reliable otherwise much inconvenience is caused. A correspondent complains that: Early in October last, the official card published by the Probate and Divorce Division notified to the solicitors and counsel that Probate and Divorce Causes, before the judge alone, would be tried from the 17th Nov. to the 28th Nov., yet notwithstanding this fact, the same court, on the 31st Oct., issued in the daily cause list a notice that those cases would be taken immediately after the special juries had concluded, and that the parties to those defended Probate and Divorce Causes must be ready at once. THE pass lists just published by the Council of Legal Education show that the percentage of failures in the present lists is higher than has ever been since the examinations were introduced, no less than fifty-eight candidates, out of 108 who presented themselves, having failed to satisfy the examiners. That the test is one for which conscientious work is needed is as it should be, for hitherto all that was wanted was an ephemeral knowledge of a few clementary principles. But, in raising the standard of the examination, the need of satisfactory tuition should not be lost sight of, for unless students are enabled to master those principles which are so essential to the proper study of the law, the mere increase of the tests will be insufficient. THE first volume of the Inner Temple Records, edited by Mr. INDERWICK, Q.C., is of great interest, principally on account of the editor's introduction. The records begin A.D. 1505, and we are told that as late as 1339 there would seem to be no clear evidence of more than one society of lawyers occupying the Temple. In the reign of HENRY VII, the separation of the Middle Temple from the old house (thenceforward described as the Inner Temple) took place. MIDDLE TEMPLE-LANE is kept open from sunrise to sunset by an Ordinance of EDWARD III. We are told by this authority: "Whereas the King is given to understand that there ought to be a common transit by the middle of the Court of the New Temple to the water of the Thames as well for the Clerks of the Chancery and other ministers as for others whomsoever wishing to go by the water aforesaid to Westminster from the rising to the setting of the sun, the King commands the Mayor to cause the gates of the Temple to be kept as before was accustomed." WE also learn that "the large garden of the Inn lying between the river and the hall is the subject of much ancient tradition, not the least noteworthy of which is the alleged gathering of the red and the white roses by the respective champions of York and Lancaster before the outbreak of the civil strife known as the Wars of the Roses. Roses in the time of CHAUCER were very prolific in England, as we know from his writings, and the Temple Garden probably cultivated with these as with other sweet-smelling shrubs at least as early as the time of HENRY VI." was THE section of the Judicial Trustees Act 1896, which came into operation last August, is as follows:-(Sect. 3) "If it appears to the court that a trustee, whether appointed under this Act or not, is or may be personally liable for any breach of trust occurred before or after the passing of this Act, but has acted honestly and reasonably, and ought fairly to be excused for the breach of trust and for omitting to obtain the directions of the court in the matter in which he committed such breach, then the court may relieve the trustee, either wholly or partly, from personal liability for the same." THE circumstance that the "leakage" of Cabinet secrets has been recently much discussed in magazine articles and the columns of the Press may render it of interest to know that the necessity for the secrecy, which is held to be binding on all members of the Cabinet in their capacity of Privy Councillors, occasioned a very vehement correspondence between Lord CAIRNS (when Lord Chancellor) and the late Sir FITZROY KELLY (when Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer). The Lord Chief Baron had publicly announced the grounds of his dissent from a judgment to which he was formally held to be a party as a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, before which an ecclesiastical appeal had been brought. This violation of the secrecy alleged to be incumbent on all Privy Councillors in their judicial, as well as their consultative, capacity gave rise to a controversy in which the Lord Chancellor (CAIRNS) took an active share adversely to the Lord Chief Baron, and was the principal author of a new Order in Council re-enforcing the obligation of secrecy, which is known as the Order of the 4th Feb. 1878. The Lord Chief Baron defended his action in a letter to the Lord Chancellor, in which, relying on precedents, he maintained that, if the stringent obligation of secrecy is to be maintained in judicial matters, at least it must be supported on utilitarian grounds, and not by the force of a practice which originated in the unconstitutional period of CHARLES I.: (see "A Letter to the Lord High Chancellor upon the late Order in Council of the 4th Feb. 1878 by the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer," 1878; see also Sheldon Amos's "Fifty Years of the British Constitution," pp. 295-298). REDEMPTION of the land tax is very fully and satisfactorily provided for by the recent Finance Act, which not only substitutes the simple consideration of thirty years' purchase for the consideration previously existing (the amount of which, depending as it did on the price of Consols at the date of the redemption, was very difficult to calculate, but would be usually equal to about thirty-four years' purchase), but allows payment of the redemption money to be made by such annual instalments as may be agreed upon with the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. Facilities for raising the redemption money are also provided by allowing owners to charge therewith, and enacting that the charge is to have priority over all other charges and incumbrances, and that any money authorised to be invested in real security may be invested on any such charge. Moreover, powers are given to trustees and corporations to sell any of their land for the purpose of raising the redemption money. Trustees will probably hasten to avail themselves of these liberal provisions, and the £800,000 worth of the tax still unredeemed out of the £2,000,000 originally imposed in 1797 may be expected to suffer considerable diminution within the next few years. All persons interested in the land assessed to the tax, except Crown tenants and tenants at rack rent, may exercise these powers of redemption. Such is the effect of sect. 10 of the Land Tax Redemption Act 1802 as read with sect. 35 of the Finance Act 1896. SINCE the passing of the Agricultural Holdings Act 1883 no statute has depended so much on its interpretation clause as the Agricultural Rates Act 1896. The first section directs that the occupier of agricultural land in England shall be liable, in the case of every rate to which the Act applies, to pay one-half only of the rate in the pound payable in respect of buildings and other hereditaments. Reference should at once be made to the interpretation clause, from which it will be found that occupier" includes owner where the owner is rated in place of the occupier-as to which the whole of the Poor Rate Assessment and Collection Act 1869 will have to be read through—and that rate" and "agricultural land" have definitions so long and complicated that we forbear to quote them. The Act is, fortunately, though important and difficult to construe, a very short one, so that the reader, once put on his guard as to the necessity for consulting the interpretation clause, will not have to travel very far to find it. But the serious practical question of drafting arises whether all Acts should not have their interpretation clauses placed at the beginning Second Sheet. instead of at the end. All modern Acts we can call to mind, except the Public Health Act 1875, have their interpretation clauses at the end, and the tendency of modern legislation is to make interpretation clauses more and more of importance. 66 WHAT is a "public body," and what is a "public body interested" within the meaning of the Rules Publication Act 1893 That Act, after providing that notice of any proposal to make statutory rules within the meaning of the Act, including Rules of the Supreme Court, and notice of the places where copies of the draft rules may be obtained is to be published in the London Gazette at least forty days before the rules are made, enacts that any public body' may obtain copies of the rules for not more than 3d. per folio, and that any public body interested may, during the forty days, make suggestions, which are to be taken into consideration by the authority making the rules.. The Act contains no definition of "public body," but in 1889, for the purposes of the Public Bodies Corrupt Practices Act, the expression was defined to mean any borough or county council, and any board or other body having power to act for the purposes of any Local Government or Public Health Act, "or otherwise to administer rates under any public general Act;" so that, shortly speaking, for the purposes of that Act a public body means a local body which handles public local money. The expression in the Rules Publication Act must at least include a public body as thus defined, and would probably also include such quasipublic bodies as the Incorporated Law Society, which society also would be a public body interested." The Bar Council would no doubt be treated as if it came within the term "public body interested," but does not appear to have that status as clearly as does the Incorporated Law Society, on the ground of its powers in connection with the admission of solicitors. The Inns of Court however would, on similar grounds, come strictly within the term, as would the Medical Council in cases where rules were made affecting the interests of medical men. 66 THE CALCUTTA JUDGESHIPS. CONSIDERABLE dissatisfaction has been excited amongst the Native Community in the Lower Provinces of Bengal by the policy which has steadfastly been pursued by the Government of India for the purpose of lowering the status of the High Court. This policy has, unfortunately, been approved by the Secretary of State for India, advised by his Council, which consists for the most part of executive members, strongly imbued with the feelings of the executive department in India. Ever since the early days of the old Supreme Court and the times of Warren Hastings, there has existed a feeling of jealousy between the executive and judicial departments of the State. The condition of things created by the vague language of "The Regulating Act," and under which the Supreme Court was enabled in the latter half of the last century to encroach on the powers of a high-handed Executive ceased, however, to exist with that century; and the higher courts have since devoted their energies and abilities to building up a system of administration of justice which, at the present day, commands the confidence and respect of the native community more than any other of our institutions. Since the amalgamation of the Supreme and Sádr Courts into the existing High Court in 1861, the friction and other disadvantages of the double system No having ceased, there has been uninterrupted progress. small credit for the satisfactory results which have been achieved is due to those who have been Chief Justices and Judges of the High Court since 1861, and have brought ability, integrity, and unwearied patience and assiduity to duties which have had to be discharged in the plains throughout the hottest months. The executive element, which is too often prone to undervalue the importance of judicial labours in the work of good government, has, however, made many attempts to interfere with an |