goods to which no one but the Crown has a right. If then the 'goods' being choses in action do not exist, how can the Crown have a right to the non-existent? The Court met this point by saying that the defunct corporation's interest in the railway shares in question was not a mere chose in action but an equitable interest in existing property.

The matter may also be looked at in a somewhat more practical way. The dissolved corporation was merely a legal name for the members of whom it consisted. The debts due to the corporation were therefore in substance, though not in form, debts due to these members. On the corporation being dissolved these debts may be considered to be in reality and in conscience the property of the persons who then constituted the corporation. But this natural justice cannot be expressed in any known terms of law or equity, and can be realized only as a matter of grace by the action of the Crown. This is a curious result, and might call for amendment if the case were likely to be common.

The doctrine laid down by the Lord Chief Justice in Blackmore v. White, '99, 1 Q. B. 293, 68 L. J. Q. B. 180, that an action founded on an implied contract lies against a copyhold tenant for omission to repair tenements repairable by the custom, is probably convenient, but it may be doubted whether the 'sages of the law' would have approved it. The Lord Chief Justice asks, 'If an action will lie for a fine, why should it not equally lie for damages for neglect by the tenant of his duty to repair?' It is submitted that debt lies for a fine because the fine is a certain sum due, and not because of any promise express or implied, for the action of debt has nothing to do with promise; and that if indebitatus assumpsit also lies, it is because of the pre-existing cause of action in debt, the promise to pay the debt being a mere fiction of pleading. It does not follow that assumpsit lies for unliquidated damages arising from the breach of a merely customary duty. The distinction does not seem to have been pointed out in argument. See Langdell's Summary, §§ 90 sqq. What made it necessary to decide the precise question was that the action was brought against executors.

A bicycle is not ordinary luggage which the railway companies are bound, if it is below a certain weight, to let a passenger carry with him free of charge (Britten v. Great Northern Railway Company, '99, 1 Q. B. 243, 68 L. J. Q. B. 75). The oddity of the thing is that any doubt should have been entertained upon the matter. A bicycle is no more ordinary luggage than is a pony or a carriage. French railway companies also distinguish between bicycles and ordinary

luggage, but, with surprising liberality, in the passenger's favour, charging a mere nominal booking-fee for any distance. As far as our information and observation go, the machines are more carefully handled than is the rule in England. But it must be remembered, in fairness to our companies, that their difficulties are much increased by the volume of other traffic. Quaere, in this connexion, whether oil in a lamp attached to a bicycle is a dangerous thing which the owner is bound to keep in at his peril when he puts the machine in a train with others. Once we found our front tyre, after a short railway journey, covered with oil from someone else's lamp. On a long journey the effects might have been serious.

X&Co. contract to load on board A's ship a full and complete cargo at a certain rate of freight per ton on the quantity to be delivered to the consignees. The freight is to be due and paid, 'two-thirds in cash after sailing, ship lost or not lost, the balance on unloading and right delivery of the cargo.' After X & Co. have loaded part of the cargo, the goods so loaded are destroyed by fire. X&Co. afterwards load the remainder of the cargo and the ship sails. claims payment of freight on two-thirds of the full cargo shipped, including the part destroyed by fire. A is not entitled to advance freight on this part of the cargo. This is the point decided by Weir & Co. v. Girvin & Co., '99, 1 Q. B. 193, 68 L. J. Q. B. 170. Nor, in spite of the elaborate argument which seems to have taken place, is it easy to doubt that the decision of the Court is right. Freight is a payment to be made for carriage and delivery, and the peculiar provisions of the charter-party as to the mode of payment do not entitle the shipowner to freight for goods which have never been carried or delivered.

Beaufort Palmer's Act has already justified its existence, judging by the number of applications for relief made under it. The Court has been liberal in granting such relief, but it has very properly not allowed the Act to be used to bolster up negligence or screen fraud (in Re Roxburghe Press, Limited, '99, 1 Ch. 210, 68 L. J. Ch. 111). Its useful career seems likely however to be cut short, for the new Companies Bill repeals s. 25, and with its repeal vanishes the necessity for relief. It is a striking instance of legislative caprice, of the tentativeness of our experimental methods, that this section -the cash payment section-after being deliberately adopted by the legislature, should a few years afterwards be brought to the bar of the House to be repealed. It is to be hoped that the legislature will pause before taking this step. For the grounds

of public policy on which it was passed have not changed in the least, and if it is repealed the mischief at which it was aimed is certain to revive-that is to say the practice of paying for shares in things like furniture, plate, cigars, or, worse still, 'services without any certain criterion of value. This is bad enough for the shareholders, but it is still more hard on creditors of the company, because it tends to make the limited capital-the only fund available to them-illusory and a sham. When the legislature sanctioned limited liability, it was under a moral obligation to see that the limited capital was a reality, and this obligation it recognized in s. 25. What reason is there-more especially since Beaufort Palmer's Act now redresses all legitimate grievances under the section-for abandoning the public once more to the arts of the unscrupulous promoter ?

Wauton v. Coppard ('99, 1 Ch. 92, 68 L. J. Ch. 8), though it lays down no new law, furnishes food for reflection on several points. First, it illustrates how rash auctioneers often are-in their anxiety to conclude bargains-in making statements, committing themselves, for instance, to assertions as to the effect of covenants— covenants the construction of which at times taxes all the wisdom of an omniscient Court of Appeal. It is consoling from this point of view to find-and this is point number 2—that when auctioneers do hazard assertions of this kind, they cannot evade responsibility for them by saying that the statement was matter of law and not of fact. It is, like heirship, matter of fact, depending on principles of law. What the auctioneer pledges himself to is the result. Nobody asks or wants his opinion on the point of law. Thirdly, in spite of Gray's sentimentalizing about 'the sprightly race,' &c., we have the judicial dictum that a boys' school involves, if not an offensive, at least a disagreeable noise or nuisance. Stoke Poges was at a safe poetic distance from the playing fields of Eton.

Finally Wauton v. Coppard is a fresh reminder that covenants must be taken to mean what they say, and are not to be restricted by artificial rules of construction like the ejusdem generis rule.

Our law, whatever its shortcomings in respect of scientific system and theoretic completeness, has the merit of keeping close to facts. Its attitude towards infants is an example of this. Mental capacity is a thing of gradual development, from its dawn in childhood to its meridian in middle age. Contract taxes it, or may tax it, to its fullest extent. Experience, judgment, delibera

tion, all the mind's maturest powers, may be called upon where a person is committing himself to a contract, and the law knowing this does not invest an infant with the capacity to contract except for things which the infant must have-the necessaries of life. Torts, however, are quite a different matter. I should like to see the man bold enough to affirm,' said Knight Bruce L.J., 'that any young lady of seventeen is not doli capax.' The male infant has proved his capacity on many occasions and in a variety of ways. In Woolf v. Woolf ('99, 1 Ch. 343, 68 L. J. Ch. 82) it took the form of passing off his goods as those of a well-known firm of tailors; but the Court, while awarding a perpetual injunction against him, hesitated with that scrupulous nicety which distinguishes our dispensers of equity-to follow up the injunction by ordering the infant to pay costs. In the end it did, and fraudulent and tortious infants must now accept-as principle demands they should--the full consequences of their acts and defaults. It is pretty to observe,' as Mr. Pepy's would say, how shy our precedent-bound English judges are in doing a thing if no judge has ever done it before.

The law of England does its best to mitigate the lot of the unhappy lunatic, and prefers that his creditors should go unpaid rather than the lunatic should suffer privation of personal comforts. But if a pauper lunatic has been maintained by the guardians for over thirty years at the expense of the rates, and at last comes in for a substantial legacy, there is no reason why the union should not be indemnified, seeing that the maintenance is a debt in lawso Chitty J. decided in In re Newbegin-and recoverable as such. But what if the union, unendowed with any gift of prophecy, has done nothing to assert its claim until the legacy turned up? Can it then claim more than six years' past maintenance from the estate of the deceased lunatic? The italicized words are material, because on the lunatic's death the paternal jurisdiction in lunacy with its powers of equitable administration is at an end, and the claim has to be fought out as a legal duel between union and creditor with all the rigour of the game. Yet even then to apply the Statute of Limitations strictly, as was done in In re Watson, Stamford Union v. Bartlett, '99, 1 Ch. 72, 68 L. J. Ch. 21, seems a hardship on the union, because the foundation of the statute is laches, and what laches is imputable to a union, as Wood V.-C. pointed out in Stedman v. Hart (Kay, 607), for not bringing a futile action against a pauper lunatic? Such an action would, it is obvious, be stayed by the Judge in Lunacy as vexatious; if it went on it would only mean money thrown away in costs. It will be interesting to

know what unions will do in the future to prevent the statute running against them in these cases of pauper lunatics unexpectedly enriched. Perhaps some insurance office will be got to take the risk-if the premium is a calculable quantity.

The reasons in favour of allowing a prisoner to give evidence on his own behalf were, in our judgment, on the whole of more weight than the very forcible arguments produced against a serious change in the criminal law. But no impartial critic ever doubted that the operation of the Criminal Evidence Act, 1898 (61 & 62 Vict. c. 36) needed to be carefully watched. R. v. Rhodes, '99, 1 Q. B. 77, 68 L. J. Q. B. 83, and R. v. Gardner, '99, 1 Q. B. 150, 68 L. J. Q. B. 42, show what it was easy enough to foresee, that the admission of a prisoner's evidence does to a certain extent change his position and by no means wholly for the benefit of the accused. As a witness, or a possible witness, he cannot enjoy all the immunities of a prisoner on his trial. When he gives evidence he gives a right to the counsel for the prosecution to sum up the case for the Crown and comment upon the evidence of the prisoner (R. v. Gardner). If he does not tender his own evidence he gives the Court (though not counsel) a right to comment on his failure to give evidence.

That the Criminal Evidence Act, 1898, may be very far from a benefit to a prisoner guilty of the offence with which he is charged is not a decisive argument against the policy of the Act, for it is fairly maintainable that the law has hitherto given a guilty man too many chances of escaping punishment, and this at the cost of occasionally exposing an innocent man to unjust conviction. That the admission of an accused person's evidence has a tendency to make the attitude of a judge less favourable than it has hitherto been towards a prisoner is, we take it, true, and is a valid argument, as far as it goes, against allowing a person charged with crime to be a witness. The conclusion which sensible observers would probably draw is that the possible tendency of the recent Act to turn a judge into a prosecutor or a cross-examiner must be carefully checked, and that the result of the Act for good or bad depends entirely upon the way in which it is worked by the Courts. Two things are perfectly clear. There ought to be absolute agreement among the judges, arrived at after careful consultation, as to the way in which many questions which of necessity are left open by the Act ought to be answered. The Act, in the next place, ought on every doubtful point to be construed in favour of the prisoner, and as far as possible in accordance with the spirit at any