as to the effect of this, and the judgment of the County Court holding the bank liable stood. Curtice v. London City and Midland Bank, K.B.D. 8th June. 23 T.R. 594.

ASSOCIATION OF BURGH OFFICIALS IN SCOTLAND.

THE annual general meeting of the Association of Burgh Officials in Scotland was held in Glasgow on Wednesday, 12th June. The president (Mr. William Simpson, town-clerk, Dunfermline) occupied the chair.

It was agreed to hold as read the report issued by the committee for 1906-7, and after remarks had been made by the president on several of the matters dealt with therein, the report was unanimously approved of, and it was remitted to the committee to take such action in regard to the bills referred to in it, as well as to the Probation of Offenders Bill (to which Mr. Blyth Martin called special attention), as the committee might deem necessary.

A vote of thanks was accorded to the president, vice-presidents, committee, and secretary and treasurer for their services during last year.

On the motion of the president, who intimated his desire to retire at this time, Mr. James Annan, town-clerk, Lanark, was unanimously elected president, and the retiring president was unanimously elected an honorary member of the Association, and awarded a special vote of thanks for the services rendered by him during his terms of office.

The meeting re-elected Messrs. Robert Young and D. B. Morris as vice-presidents, and elected Mr. W. H. Blyth Martin, town-clerk, Dundee, as a vice-president.

The following committee was appointed, viz. :-The president and vice-presidents, and Messrs. D. Patrick, town-clerk, Kirkintilloch; David Dewar, chief constable, Dundee; J. A. Houston, townclerk, Govan; R. A. Grierson, town-clerk depute, Dumfries; John Cameron, procurator-fiscal, Greenock; F. G. Holmes, burgh surveyor, Govan; James Smith, town-clerk, Girvan; Alexander Walker, townclerk depute, Glasgow.

The secretary and treasurer was re-elected.

It was intimated that an invitation had been received to hold the autumn meeting of the Association at Lanark on Friday, 30th August next. It was agreed to accept the invitation, and the meeting remitted to the committee to make the necessary arrangements.

The secretary was instructed to issue a circular to all burgh officials who had not yet become members of the Association, urging them to join it, and the members were urged to get additional members to join.

A number of questions on matters of professional interest were submitted and discussed. These and the deliverances thereon are reported in The County and Municipal Record of 2nd July.

Appointments, Business Changes, &c.

PRESTWICK.-Mr. William Shaw, solicitor, Dalblair Chambers, Ayr, has been appointed town-clerk of Prestwick, in room of Mr. John Stewart, resigned.

GLASGOW.-Mr. J. Drummond Strathern and Mr. David Macmillan have commenced business at 175 St. Vincent Street, under the firmname of Strathern & Macmillan.

Mr. William Andrew, from the office of the Solicitor of Inland Revenue, has taken an office at 104 West George Street, Glasgow, where he may be consulted on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays regarding death duties, income tax returns, registration of limited companies, &c.

PERTH.-Mr. David Taylor, solicitor, lately managing clerk to Messrs. J. & W. F. Adam, W.S., Edinburgh, and Mr. Charles Parnie Campbell, solicitor, from the office of Messrs. Macandrew, Wright, & Murray, W.S., Edinburgh, have commenced practice at 61 George Street, under the firm-name of Taylor & Campbell.

GLASGOW FACULTY OF PROCURATORS.-The annual meeting of the Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow was held on 6th June in the Library Hall, St. George's Place-the Dean, James A. Reid, LL.D., in the chair. The following law agent was admitted a member of Faculty, viz., Andrew Stewart, West Regent Street, Glasgow. The Dean called the attention of the meeting to the report of the special representatives of the Faculty on the Sheriff Court (Scotland) Bill, 1907, and, in moving the approval of the report, said it should receive the hearty support of the Faculty and of the profession throughout Scotland. The report was unanimously approved of. The Dean submitted the annual report of the Council, with the treasurer's accounts annexed, and on his motion the accounts were approved of and the treasurer discharged. The Dean then moved that Messrs. Reid & Mair, C.A., be reappointed auditors for the current year. The Dean moved that the report of the Library Committee be approved. The report showed that 535 volumes had been added during the year. The report was approved of, and £500 was voted from the funds of the Faculty in aid of the library for the current year. On the motion of Mr. Brunton, convener of the Court-House Committee, the report of that committee was approved of. Mr. James A. Reid, LL.D., was re-elected Dean, and, on the motion of the Dean, the Council and members of the various committees were appointed. The following representatives on the governing bodies of public institutions were appointed :Baillie's Institution-John F. Orr; St. Mungo College-Richard Brown; Glasgow Samaritan Hospital for Women-John M'Intosh; Camden Society-David Murray, LL.D.; the John Reid Bursary-John Hurll, B.L.; the John Gibson Bursary-Allan F. Baird; the Glasgow Eye Infirmary-William Gillies.

THE subject of bankruptcy reform seems at present to be engaging considerable attention, and there would appear to be something very like a consensus of competent opinion that some alteration and amendment of the presently existing bankruptcy statutes has become desirable, if not altogether absolutely necessary. Certainly no one who is conversant with ordinary business affairs can fail to be impressed with the fact that the present machinery provided by our law for the distribution of an insolvent's estates among his creditors, with a consequent discharge of the debtor from his existing obligations, seems largely to have broken down. Those who come most frequently in contact with business men are aware that more and more there seems to be growing a disposition on the part of the mercantile community to dispense with the ordinary procedure of sequestration and cessio, and to resort to private settlements between an insolvent debtor and his creditors. For one sequestration now carried through to its conclusion, there are, it is believed, something like ten composition settlements, either judicial or extra-judicial--the latter largely predominating. Nor is it difficult to grasp the reason for this state of affairs. In the first place, cessio, which was designed to be an easy, cheap, and expeditious method of distributing the estates of small debtors, has proved itself to be a comparatively inefficient and useless method of procedure. Originally designed as a means whereby an insolvent debtor, on abandoning his estate to his creditors, might obtain his personal freedom, it was by the Debtors Act of 1880 essentially altered in its character, and became, like sequestration, simply a means whereby an embarrassed debtor might obtain his discharge from his obligations by a surrender of his estate to his creditors. But in at least four essential particulars cessio lacks the requisites necessary to assimilate it to the

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process of sequestration, as a means for the prevention of fraud, and a method of safeguarding the rights of the insolvent's creditors. (1) The bankrupt's heritable estate does not, like his moveable, vest in the trustee as at the date of the decree, but only at the date of the disposition omnium bonorum. (2) The decree does not, as in sequestration, operate to cut down all individual diligence by creditors executed prior to its date. (3) Acquirenda, or property acquired by the bankrupt between the date of the decree and that of his discharge, does not, as in sequestration, vest in the trustee. And, lastly, (4) the trustee, as the assignee only of the debtor, does not possess the power, like the trustee in a sequestration, to cut down illegal preferences granted by the bankrupt, unless he happen to represent one or more prior creditors who themselves possess the power. If the law of cessio were amended in these four particulars there is reason to believe that, on account of its expeditiousness, cheapness, and elasticity, cessio would continue to be increasingly taken advantage of. The most serious objections to sequestration, and those to which its unpopularity is, perhaps, chiefly due, are the comparatively enormous expenses which the process involves, and which are not infrequently sufficient to practically eat up the dividend which would otherwise be distributed among the creditors; the statutory delay necessary between the date of the presentation of the petition and that of the payment of the dividend; and the absence of adequate provision for the detection and punishment of fraud.

In the limits within which this article is necessarily confined little more than a brief summary of some of the more cogent reforms can be attempted. Now, it may be, and, indeed, is usually, frankly conceded that, as regards the honest but unfortunate debtor whose bankruptcy is untainted with the suspicion of fraudulent deception, our present bankruptcy law leaves little to be desired. Indeed, the phrase "bankruptcy reform" is generally understood to mean reform in the direction solely of providing a legislative net whose meshes shall be sufficiently small to catch the fraudulent debtor, yet sufficiently elastic to permit the honest but unfortunate debtor to slip through. Modern bankruptcy procedure rests upon the Act of 1856, which in turn repealed, though it substantially re-enacted, several of the provisions of the earlier Acts. But since 1856 no fewer than ten amending Acts have been passed, by which considerable amendment and alteration of the law have been effected. In view, therefore, of the number of statutes and relative Acts of Sederunt which now regulate our

bankruptcy procedure, and of the vast body of judicial decisions with which the subject is surrounded-obscured might, perhaps, be the more appropriate word the reform which is, perhaps, most urgently required, and which should, therefore, take precedence of every other, is that of codification—a task no doubt of great magnitude, but not of insuperable difficulty. Of all branches of the law there is none, perhaps, which more readily lends itself to codification than that of bankruptcy, and in no department of jurisprudence would codification prove of more value, alike to the practising lawyer and to the commercial community at large.

In a perfectly balanced system of bankruptcy an attempt is made to deal out even-handed justice, both to the bankrupt and to his creditors. Our bankruptcy legislation in its inception, however, took little note of the bankrupt himself, the general assumption underlying all early attempts to regulate the distribution of an insolvent's estate being that, while the debtor's position was due to his own fault, incompetence, or fraud, the rights of his creditors alone deserved recognition. Thus, the earliest bankruptcy statute, that of 1621-prior to which individual creditors were left to run a race of diligence against each other for possession of the bankrupt's estate-was passed to prevent an insolvent from transferring his assets by means of gratuitous alienations to "conjunct and confident persons (or, as we should say, to persons with whom for any reason he was on terms of intimate personal relationship), and to disable him from alienating property against which a creditor had begun to do diligence, and in which he had, therefore, to a certain extent acquired a jus quæsitum. And the immediately succeeding Act of 1696, c. 5, had as its object to prevent an insolvent who was notour bankrupt from transferring his property to one or more favoured creditors, either in satisfaction or security of an already existing debt, within a certain limited time prior to his bankruptcy. These two Acts for the first time gave recognition to a principle which is now a cardinal doctrine of bankruptcy law, that from the moment when a man becomes insolvent he becomes, quoad his property, to all intents and purposes a mere trustee for behoof of the general body of his creditors, for whose behoof he holds, and is bound to administer, his estate, and to whom he is ultimately liable to account. But it was not until a little over a century ago (in 1772) that sequestration in the modern acceptance of the meaning of the word, as the setting apart in neutral custody of the assets of a bankrupt, and their subsequent distribution rateably among his creditors, was introduced. Prior to that