4. Mr. Munton inquires who really want fusion, and refers to the discussion at the Provincial Law Congress in 1888. To take the last point first. As to the vote referred to, it was taken at the close, when only a handful of members were present; and Mr. Munton will not, I am sure, seek to assign serious value to it. As regards the larger question, I will tell him who they are that desire fusion. They are those who believe that the enforced division of the profession into separate orders is an unnatural and purely artificial one, and unfairly depresses our branch of it, closing all those avenues to public and professional distinction which are open to the bar alone. Let any one read the able report on 'The Status of Solicitors,' just issued by the Liverpool Law Society, and note the almost pathetic way in which it is pointed out that, while by birth and general and professional education, solicitors are, as a rule, now on an equality with the bar, yet they are debarred from filling any of the long list of judicial and other appointments set out in the report. Those, too, desire fusion who believe that it would be far better for the client, as he would thereby be brought into more direct contact with the advocate, and the expense of litigation would be materially reduced. The advocates of fusion, however, are not confined to the solicitors. Sir Edward Clarke is not the only one in high official position in the other branch of the profession who has expressed sympathy with the cause. And it is impossible to read the recent article by the Lord Chief Justice in the Contemporary Review, in which he quotes the settled opinion of Mr. Benjamin, the great American advocate, who had experience of both systems, without believing that his sympathies lie in that direction.

As regards the mercantile community, their opinion was elicited two years ago at the annual meeting of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, when a vote in favour of fusion was carried. The opinion of the press, from the Times downwards, and the views of some of the most thoughtful writers outside the profession, have been expressed in the same direction.

5. I am in complete accord with Mr. Munton that fusion alone will not be by any means a sufficient remedy for the glaring defects that exist in the present administration of the law. C. T. SAUNDERS.

Birmingham: Sept. 17.

Sir,-Your able and distinguished correspondent, Mr. C. T. Saunders, has gone straight to the point in denouncing the excessive centralisation of legal business' which, in its result, injuriously affects the progress of every suit, from its inception to its too generally long protracted close.' His remarks, however, have reference only, or chiefly, to the Queen's Bench (or Common Law) Division of the High Court of Justice; the Chancery Division can never be decentralised. It is quite true, as Mr. Saunders more than hints, that the exciting state of affairs exactly suits the arrangements of a small minority-barristers and London solicitors-who, between them, are strong enough in and out of Parliament to hold the fort' for a time. They can postpone, but they cannot, in the long run, prevent the application of the true remedy pointed out by the Judicature Commissioners years ago-namely, the enlargement of the County Courts into branches of the High Court, with unlimited jurisdiction in Common Law actions.

Whatever force the 'great central bar' argument may have had five-and-twenty years ago, it would be idle to urge it now. The growing magnitude and multitude of Chancery proceedings, the necessity of a great central appellate tribunal, and, I will add, a great Central Criminal Court, will always secure the existence in London of a great central bar-that is, a bar of real workers and real learners, as distinguished from a great mob of un

employed, with here and there an eminent, or lucky, monopolist of briefs.

Happily for the interests of litigants and suitors, the decentralisation of common law litigation is being effected by a process which is rather slow in its operation, but very sure in its result. The eminently worthy Mrs. Partingtons of the common law bar may work hard and deftly, but the ocean of inevitable reform is not to be withstood by any amount of broomstick industry.

In the year 1875 district registries of the High Court of Justice were, by Order in Council, established in no less than eighty of the principal towns and populous centres of England and Wales, and it was provided that the registrars of the County Courts held in those places respectively should, then and thereafter, be appointed district registrars of the High Court. In other words, provision was made for the local administration of the procedure in common law actions in every stage up to the trial. Eighty County Court registrars thus virtually became, pro hac vice, masters of the Supreme Court, with power to make orders on interlocutory summonses and applications in chambers, and with a substantial augmentation of their emoluments. Now amongst the discretionary powers vested in masters of the Supreme Court is that of remitting, for trial in a County Court, on the application of either party, any common law action of contract brought in the High Court for less than 100. Further, if both parties agree in writing that he shall do so, every judge of County Courts is, by statute, invested with jurisdiction to try any action, for any amount no matter how large, assigned to the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court. The result of all this has been, since 1875, to transfer to the County Courts an increasingly large number of actions for large amounts. The subjoined table, which is taken from a Parliamentary return from every County Court in Eng land and Wales of the total number of plaints, &c., entered in each Court,' shows the result at a glance. It should be noted that column A represents what may be termed ordinary County Court and debt-collecting cases; column B, petty litigation; and column C, heavy litigation :—

Law. Cambridge: University Press. 1890.

ALIQUIS.

Sir,-The first two of Mr. Munton's questions cannot be answered, and, if they could, I cannot see that any good would come of it. Who, for instance, can say (questions 1 and 2) how many solicitors have the training or tastes' which would enable them to perform the work of advocates with any fair chance of success,' or how such persons, if any there be, can so arrange their business as to enable them to gratify such tastes? The point is, why is A., a barrister, or B., a solicitor, to be prevented from doing any legal work which he can do, which he wishes to do, and which a layman is ready to pay him for doing?

Personally, like Mr. Munton, I am contented with things as they are; but I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that there are many barristers and solicitors who are by no means so content, and whose cry is liberty of action and free trade in law; and, as a matter of justice and right, I cannot see why either branch should suffer, or fancy it suffers, by the restraint of old rules made in far different times. If barrister A. chooses to see lay clients and advise them, and conduct their business for them from beginning to end for a fixed sum, why should he and his lay client be prevented from so doing? Or if solicitor B. chooses to arrange with his client that he will argue his case in Court and see the whole matter through for a fixed sum, why should law or custom or etiquette step between them?

It is no answer to say that the majority in both branches of the profession are contented with things as they are; let them continue in the old paths. No one wishes to coerce solicitors into advocacy or barristers into interviewing lay clients, but if you will give men liberty to arrange their business as they think best, there is at least a fair chance the round pegs will fit themselves into the round holes. It is no answer to say (theoretically, but dogmatically) that such a change would not make the administration of the law cheaper. Let it be tried, and I (also dogmatising) say that experience will soon corroborate common sense in proving that it is cheaper to have one legal cook (for some legal messes) than three or four.

The onus is on those who contend that there is one exception to the otherwise universal rule that freedom of contract is good for the public and for the individual, and that such exception is the profession of the law.

As to Mr. Munton's other questionsQuestion 3.-Why should not the leader whose name is in everybody's mouth' be available, for an adequate honorarium, to lead, if he required it, the solicitor

advocate?

Question 4.-I cannot, of course, answer this question further than by saying that to the best of my knowledge and belief a very considerable minority of members of both branches do cry out for liberty of individual

action.

Question 5.-I do not understand the first part of the question, and as to the latter, I was not aware that any. one had ever suggested such an absurdity as that fusion would be a remedy for blundering in the matter of rules and regulations.

T. S.

THE TRANSVAAL.-Mr. George T. Morice has been appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of the Transvaal. This is the only appointment of an Englishman to a high position in the Republic since the late war. Mr. Morice was educated at Aberdeen and Lincoln College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. in 1881. He was called to the bar

at the Middle Temple in 1883.

THE INFECTIOUS DISEASE PREVENTION ACT, 1890.—

A circular has been issued by the Local Government Board to the clerks of vestries and district boards in London, drawing attention to this Act, the provisions of which will come into force in December next. The circular states that the Act confers upon the local authorities important powers, which the Board trust that they and their officers will use every effort to carry out efficiently. These powers are exercisable in regard to the supply of milk suspected of spreading infection, to the disinfection of premises, and the removal of bodies, as well as other matters.

WILL OF THE LATE MR. JOHN CLAYTON.-The value

of the personal estate of the late Mr. John Clayton, of the city and county of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and of Chesters, Northumberland, F.S.A., who died on July 14 last, aged ninety-eight years, has been sworn at 728,7461. 8s. 4d. Mr. Clayton was for forty-five years town clerk of Newcastle, in which office he succeeded his father, who was town clerk from 1785 to 1822. After several charitable and personal bequests, including 30l. a year for the care and maintenance of the house-dog Marcus Aurelius and the other canine favourite which survives him, the testator bequeaths the residue of his personal estate to his nephew, Mr. Nathaniel George Clayton.

SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH' AND SHAKESPEAREAN REPRESENTATION.--A work upon the above subject (from the pen of an experienced dramatic critic, Mr. E. Gilbert Highton, M.A., Cantab. et Oxon., F.R.S.I.) having for its main object the exposition of a dramatic treatment of Shakespeare in accordance with his demonstrable intentions, comprising critical remarks upon many recent Shakespearean productions, and particularly upon that of Macbeth' at the Lyceum in 1889, and of As You Like It,' by the Daly Company at the same theatre in July, 1890, and adorned by an elaborate frontispiece and afterpiece, both by Mr. Philip Harry Newman, is on the eve of publication by Messrs. Harrison & Sons, Her Majesty's printers, of St. Martin's Lane and 59 Pall Mall, London.

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS FROM 1880 TO 1889.-A table has been recently published by Messrs. W. H. Allen which affords much interesting information in regard to the sittings of the House of Commons during the last ten years. It is in the form of a calendar, which shows at a glance on what days during each month the House sat, with special information appended regarding late adjournments and extraordinary sittings. The respective lengths of each session and recess can be easily ascertained, and the names of the Prime Ministers for each year are also given. It appears that on four occasions during the decade the sittings extended into Sunday: on July 3-4, 1880; on July 22-23, 1882; on August 18-19, 1883; and on March 15-16, 1884. The longest sitting lasted no less than 41 hours-from 4 P.M. on Monday, January 31, 1881, to 9.30 A.M. on Wednesday, February 2. The debate, which was on the motion for leave to bring in the Protection of Person and Property (Ireland) Bill, was stopped by the Speaker, and the House met again at noon on the Wednesday. On four other occasions sittings lasted more than twenty hours. The table is printed in compact pamphlet form and is published at 67.

CONVICT PRISONS IN 1889-90.

THE Home Office has just issued the annual report of the Directors of Convict Prisons in England for the year ending March 31, 1890. The number of male convicts received into the convict prisons under fresh sentences during that period was 879, besides 130 with licenses revoked or recommitted to serve out the period remitted from their former sentences. The numbers of the female convicts of the corresponding classes were respectively seventy-two and twenty-eight. The number of sentences of penal servitude passed by ordinary Courts in England and Wales in 1889 was 918. This is lower than in any previous year excepting 1886, when it was 910 (the lowest number on record). A tabulated statement in the report, giving the yearly average number of persons sentenced on indictment to penal servitude in England and Wales, illustrates in a striking manner the great and progressive decrease in the number of sentences for serious crime. During the five years ended December 31, 1859, the average yearly number was 2,589; ended with 1864, 2,800; with 1869, 1,978; with 1874, 1,622; with 1879, 1,633; with 1884, 1,427; with 1889, 945. The full significance of these figures is not realised till we come to take into account the growth of population in the last forty years. In the five years ending December 31, 1859, the estimated average population of England and Wales was 19,257,000, and in the five years ending December 31, 1889, it was 28,252,000. Naturally, then, our convict prison population shows a decrease; while on the last day of 1869 there were 11,660 persons in custody under sentence of penal servitude in Great Britain, Gibraltar, and Western Australia, the number in July of this year was only 5,944.

The report goes on to inform us that the number of deaths from natural causes was sixty-two, or 116 per thousand of the daily average population, which is less than last year, though above the mean mortality of the previous ten years. There were seven deaths from some sort of cancer. The epidemic of influenza did not materially affect the mortality, which is no doubt due to the great care taken to prevent the conditions arising which favour its development, and to place every prisoner suffering from it, in however mild a form, at once under treatment. There can be no question that the medical inspector is right when he remarks that the attention to sanitary matters and the regular lives led by the inmates is no doubt the reason why such good health is maintained in our prisons. The constitutions of a great part of the prisoners, either from inheritance or from dissipated lives led by them when out of prison, are certainly such as would produce a higher rate of mortality and sickness among them under circumstances less favourable to them than those under which they live in prison.'

The report continues remarks made in former ones on the desirability of making such an alteration of the law as would allow of sentences intermediate between two years, which is practically the maximum sentence of imprisonment, and five years the minimum sentence of penal servitude. The present law came into operation in 1864.

Now, in 1856, Mr. Waddington, Under-Secretary of State, when examined before a committee of the House of Commons, said, 'I think that the jump from two years' imprisonment to four years' penal servitude which our mediate punishment. There might be many cases which law makes is too much. I think there should be an interwere formerly punished with seven years' transportation in which I should think that three years' penal servitude authorised a sentence of not less than three years' penal would be amply sufficient.' Accordingly, the Act of 1857 servitude for any offence which might be punished by seven years' transportation. All this was altered after the report in 1863 of the royal commission appointed to report on the Penal Servitude Acts, and the system adopted to carry them out. The directors of convict prisons are of opinion that it would be easier to reintroduce the sentence of three years' penal servitude than to alter the law so as to legalise longer sentences of imprisonment, and the former course would allow of greater elasticity in carrying out the intermediate sentences, because, as the law now stands, a prisoner may be either in a convict or a local prison, whereas a prisoner under sentence of imprisonment can only be in a local prison.

BIRTHS.

On Sept. 17, at 26 Bedford Square, Brighton, the wife of Daniel W. Lee, Barrister-at-Law, of Shepherds Hill, Harefield, of a son. On Sept. 20, at Hadleigh, Suffolk, the wife of Alfred Newman, Esq., Solicitor (prematurely), of a son.

On Sept. 22, at 12 Somers Place, W., the wife of Francis R. Y. Radcliffe, Esq., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law, of a daughter.

MARRIAGES.

On Sept. 16, at St. Mark's, Regent's Park, Lorence Ralph Ryland, Barrister-at-Law, 2 Chester Place, son of Henry Skipper Ryland, Esq., of Bedford Square, to Augusta Katharine, second daughter of Major V. Rolleston, of Swindon, Wilts, and Pan Manor, Isle of Wight.

On Sept. 18, at St. Matthew's, Hammersmith, Humphrey Patricius Senhouse, The Fitz, Cockermouth, only son of the late Richard Senhouse, Esq, of the same place, to Constance, third daughter of the late Richard Hare, Solicitor, of Weymouth.

DEATHS.

michael, C.S.I., and daughter of the late John Crofton, Solicitor, of On Sept. 13, at Hove, West Brighton, Annabella, wife of C. P. CarLincoln's Inn.

On Sept. 16, at Kirkby Lonsdale, Eleanor, widow of the late Thomas Eastham, Solicitor, in her 91st year. On Sept. 18, Joseph Chatwin Parry, of Lacklands, Beckenham, late Honorary Magistrate of Delhi, aged 65 years.

THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM IN EGYPT. Mr. Justice Scott, who recently arrived from Cairo for the purpose, it is understood, of conferring with the Foreign Office respecting his proposals for the reform of the judicial system in Egypt, has left for Paris to make himself more thoroughly acquainted with the practical working of the French Courts of Justice. He returns to his post in Egypt on the 1st prox.

THE Commissioners state that the number of prisoners received during the past year in local prisons under sentence of the ordinary Courts was 145,268, besides 1,243 soldiers and sailors sentenced by courts-martial. There were also 8,926 persons imprisoned as debtors, or on civil process, making a total of 155,437. The corresponding numbers for the preceding year were as follows: Convicted by the ordinary Courts, 153,963; by courts-martial, 1,222; debtors and civil process, 8,664; total, 163,849. It seems that the average daily population of the prisons in 1889-90 was 14,389—viz. 11,852 males and 2,537 females. In the previous year it was 15,255-viz. 12,673 males and 2,582 females. The highest number of prisoners shown in any of the monthly returns was 15,143 on June 4, 1889, and the lowest was 13,248 on March 4, 1890, the highest number being 14:3 per cent. above the lowest number. It would be quite reasonable to expect, say the commissioners, that the numbers will rise again above their present unprecedentedly low level, though they trust, as also do we, that they will not rise to the previous high number.

of

WE publish elsewhere a sensible and energetic letter of protest against the 'taxation of inventors, to which we alluded in a recent number of the LAW JOURNAL. That the present system of patent taxes in this country is both unjust and inexpedient hardly admits of serious denial. The note to which our correspondent refers had a double object. We desired to show that the Patent Office could maintain itself without the aid of renewal fees; and we endeavoured, in the next place, to bring history to the help of the advocates for the abolition of those fees by suggesting that the abnormal taxation of patentees in England was due to the old political, and it may be added judicial, beliefs that patents for inventions and monopolies, in the injurious sense the term, are identical, and that patent grants issue by royal favour alone. The questions that we urge upon the consideration of the legal profession are these-Are not patent-right and copyright substantially identical in their legal character? Is not every true and first inventor,' within the meaning of the Statutes of Monopolies and the decisions thereunder, entitled to a patent on compliance with the formalities prescribed by the Act of 1883 ? If these questions are answered in the affirmative, it follows that letters patent are not a proper subject for taxation, and the sole remaining obstacles to a reduction of the renewal fees are the alleged necessities of the Patent Office-an argument disposed of by the ComptrollerGeneral's report-and the peculiar historical development of the patent law. A system deriving its only vitality from the accidents of history is bound to die, but it always dies hard. The lunacy law of England has scarcely yet got rid of an absurd test of criminal responsibility in mental disease that would never have been adopted but for the vagaries of the English-speaking disciples of Pinel.