6

p. 326, that as a rule the law of the flag of the ship shall regulate the construction of shipping documents,' qualified by an express reference to the apparently contradictory judgment of the Court of Appeal in the Missouri case (42 Ch. D. 321), which, by the way, is only cited from the Weekly Reporter, though it was printed in the Law Reports by November, 1889, and Mr. Macdonell's preface is dated February, 1890, cases as late as the January Law Reports being referred to in the Addenda. The statement at p. 339 as to the course of business with mate's receipts and bills of lading is quite inaccurate as regards the port of London, and many other large ports. Lickbarrow v. Mason, on p. 346, should not be cited without a reference to its commentary, Sewell v. Burdick in 10 App. C. In the discussion of seaworthiness, we should expect to find some note of that important branch of the warranty known as cargo-worthiness exemplified in Tattersall v. National SS. Co., 12 Q. B. D. 297; and of the common form of exemption from the warranty shown in The Laertes, 12 P. D. 187. We doubt whether the custom of the river Thames' alleged at p. 360, on the authority of cases decided in 1792 and 1805, has any existence in 1890. It is worse than useless gravely to cite as applicable to the present day cases decided at a time when the dock system was non-existent, and ships discharged in the river. The statement at p. 368, that advance freight is irrecoverable though the ship and goods are lost, is untrue, if the loss is not caused by excepted perils (see G. I. Pen. R. Co. v. Turnbull, 53 L. T. 325), or if the ship was not sea-worthy or did not start in a reasonable time (Ex parte Nyholm, 29 L. T. 634). We should expect to find a definition at the same place of 'lump freight;' and the statement that in a lump sum charter, if the vessel were to lose part of her cargo, it has been doubted whether freight would be payable for the remainder,' might surely be revised with reference to the cases of The Norway (3 Moore P. C. N. S. 245); Robinson v. Knights (L. R. 8 C. P. 465); Merchant Shipping Co. v. Armitage (L.R. 9 Q. B. 99); which are not referred to, but which all deal with the question. We have not nearly exhausted the criticisms to be made on this section of the work; its faults are absence of arrangement, inaccuracy of statement, and failure to revise judiciously both the law and the practice therein stated, with regard to the changed conditions of commerce. While we have not examined the rest of the work with equal care, from what has been examined, there seems no reason to consider the section on the contract of affreightment an unfavourable specimen of the work. It is certainly surprising to find in a work published in February, 1890, which cites cases as late as January, 1890, not a line of reference to Derry v. Peek, decided in the House of Lords on July 1, 1889, reported at length in the Times of the following day, and in the Law Reports in August, 1889, and this is the more surprising as the case is twice cited in the Court of Appeal. As appears from the preceding criticism, the additions and revision of the new editors are equally at fault with the old text; that the new editors were able to do a great deal better than this we cannot doubt, and we can only suppose that the numerous occupations to which the editor refers in his preface have prevented a better edition being prepared. It is to be regretted under these circumstances that it was thought necessary to prepare one at all.

It is a relief after so much unfavourable criticism, to speak with unhesitating praise of one feature of the book, the new introduction on the History of Mercantile Law, contributed by Mr. Macdonell. No doubt this history has yet to be written; it is doubtful even whether the materials for a history of the subject-matter of Mercantile Law as distinguished from

found in a case which was a decision of Lord Thurlow's, having no bearing upon the subject.

The book, however, comprises a vast amount of matter and will be useful as a work of reference, though it will be necessary to exercise some caution in relying on the conclusions enunciated in it.

A. D. TYSSEN.

A Treatise on International Law. By WILLIAM EDWARD HALL. Third Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1890. 8vo. xxviii and

788 pp.

It might be unjust to the original merits of Mr. Hall's work to say that he has made it a materially better book than it was at first. But he has certainly made it more useful. It has established itself as the one concise and practical English treatise on a subject which has suffered perhaps more than any other in the whole range of jurisprudence from diffuse and irrelevant writing. In the preface to this edition Mr. Hall has a shrewd forecast of the next stage of the development of the law of nations. The next European war will be on a great scale, and whether it be long or short, there is great reason to fear that it will be a wide-spread, a hard, and a bitter one. There is great risk of passion being too much for rule and justice; and unhappily there is already plenty of evidence that passion will never be at a loss for more or less plausible sophistry to make its worse reason appear the better. Mr. Hall's sayings are not smooth. Of course it would be much more agreeable to listen to the people who talk of universal peace and arbitration, in the face of a nation of eighty millions of men armed to the teeth under an irresponsible and unaccountable government, which may at any moment find the hazard of foreign war less than that of revolution at home, or may be displaced by explosive forces not more likely to confine their operation within their own frontiers than were those of the French Revolution. But we fear that men of sense, while welcoming everything that makes for peace, must assent to Mr. Hall with some such words as those of Mr. Pepys: A devilish saying, but true.' Mr. Hall has one topic of consolation for us. 'There can be very little doubt that if the next war is unscrupulously waged, it also will be followed by a reaction towards increased stringency of law. . . it is a matter of experience that times in which international law has been seriously disregarded have been followed by periods in which the European conscience has done penance by putting itself under straiter obligations than those which it before acknowledged.' Meanwhile it would be well, as Mr. Hall points out elsewhere, if British naval officers were not encouraged to simulate, in the course of peace manœuvres, operations against undefended coast towns which are certainly contrary to the law of nations, and would probably be found anything but wise or profitable in the long run by a nation which indulged in them in actual warfare. The only material alteration in Mr. Hall's text to which we need call attention is on the subject of pacific blockade. His objections to this practice have been overcome by the recent example of its effective use in the case of Greece in 1886.

The Modern Law of Railways, as determined by the Courts and Statutes of England and the United States. By CHARLES FISK BEACH, junior. San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney Company. 1890. 2 vols. La. 8vo. xlv and 1544 pp.

THIS pair of volumes, of a size unknown to the English law-publisher, presents several features of interest to an English lawyer. Mr. Beach

and capital punishment should be abolished. Prison life should be active and social, not a mere purposeless routine. The medical expert should be an assessor and not a witness. Such are the leading points in Mr. Ellis's argument. The criticisms to which in some respects it might legitimately give rise are obvious. But the work as a whole is original and suggestive, and deserves the consideration which it will doubtless receive. A glossary of the chief medical and psychological terms used throughout the volume would add distinctly to the value of a second edition. It is simply barbarous to hurl at a lay reader such a sentence as the following (p. 52): 'Lombroso, when he examined the skull of Gasparone, a famous brigand of the beginning of the century, whose name still lives in legends and poems, found microcephaly of the frontal region, a wormian bone, eurigmatism, increase in the orbital capacity, oxycephaly, and extreme dolichocephaly.'

A. WOOD RENTON.

The Law of Charities and Mortmain, being a third edition of Tudor's Charitable Trusts. By L. S. BRISTOWE and W. I. Cook. London: Reeves & Turner. 1889. La. 8vo. xevi and 1048 pp.

THIS book is divisible into three parts; the first, consisting of 370 pages, covers in general the same ground as the text of the last edition of Tudor's Charitable Trusts; the second, extending to p. 444, comprises the Mortmain Act, 1888, with an introduction and notes; and the third, extending to p. 870, includes the matters comprised in Mr. Mitcheson's recent work, namely the Charity Commission Acts, with an introduction and notes, and the forms used by the Charity Commissioners.

Throughout the book we observe that the editors have taken great pains in searching all the reports for charity cases, and they have thus noticed a good many which had been overlooked by previous writers. They give also references to all the reports in their list of cases, and a very full table of contents and a copious index.

It appears to us that the editors have been less happy in their mode of dealing with their cases, after they have collected them, and that their modes of arranging the divisions of the subject and stating the results of the cases leave much that could be desired. The Georgian Mortmain Act (9 Geo. 2, c. 36), and the Acts amending it, and the doctrines of impure personalty and secret trusts deserved separate chapters or sections. But we find them all combined in notes on the fourth section of the Mortmain Act of 1888. In the chapter on Superstitious Uses we find a reproduction of the mistake made by Mr. Tudor in confusing together superstitious trusts and forbidden religious trusts. In the sections on the cyprès doctrine, we find cases introduced which are not instances of it, but merely show what effect will be given to certain general words, or illustrate the rule that a trust shall not fail for default of a trustee. And on almost all points we find too great an inclination to refer everything to the general doctrine of intention without discriminating the rules to be derived from the decisions as guides to the intention in particular cases.

The result is that many of the statements of law require considerable qualification, e. g. (pp. 40 and 140) that the cyprès doctrine is applied where an institution, to which a bequest is given, has ceased to exist, (pp. 36 and 140) that charitable gifts expressed in indefinite terms are applied cyprès, and (p. 109) that property impressed with a perpetual charitable trust can never revert. And there are some grosser slips, as on p. 441, where we are told that a dictum of Arden M.R. on the custom of London will be

estate, B would only take an equitable estate pur autre vie; secondly, under the limitation stated, B takes the legal estate by virtue of the Statute of Uses. The effect of registration of a writ under 51 & 52 Vict. c. 51 does not depend upon notice, p. 130.

There is, however, a great deal that is good in this book: the manner of stating the cases cited is nearly perfect; the explanation of Pawn, Lien and Mortgage, p. 130, is excellent, being at once lucid and concise. As a manual for teachers who are themselves fairly good lawyers it will be valuable.

[We know another man who wrote a plain and concise book on a similar subject. He took the precaution of submitting the proof-sheets to two very learned friends. And, what was more, those learned friends read them. Yet the book, when it came out, contained a flagrant mistake in an elementary point, which wholly escaped notice until a second edition was nearly through the press, and then got corrected at the eleventh hour. Let none of us think he standeth. Flaubert, the most terribly just of men of letters, made some way in collecting a museum of the blunders and imbecilities of great writers.-ED.]

The Law of Support and Subsidence. By HARRY LUSHINGTON STEPHEN. London: Butterworths. 1890. 8vo. xix and 96 pp.

THIS is a useful little monograph. The author distinguishes very clearly between the right of the owner of land in its natural condition to support from his neighbour's land, and his right to support, when he has by building added some thing to the weight of his land, the former being, and the latter not being, an easement. This distinction becomes of importance, if owing to excavations on the land which gives the support, the other land is injured by the withdrawal of the support. In the former case, if one excavation causes several successive subsidences, each subsidence is a fresh cause of action, and time begins to run from the instant when the subsidence takes place, while in the latter case the interference with the easement is the cause of action, and time begins to run from the interference.

The author discusses, at considerable length, the various modes of acquiring a right to artificial support, viz. grant, covenant, prescription and Act of Parliament.

At page 12 he discusses very concisely the question how far the surface owner may have the right to support of subterranean water, a question which is gradually acquiring importance.

We must enter a protest against the author's manner of citing cases. He often gives references to the Law Journal only, and that even in instances where the reference to the so-called authorised report1 could be found without much labour. For example, the only reports of the important case of Bonomi v. Backhouse in the Courts of Queen's Bench and Exchequer Chamber that he refers to are in the Law Journal, while the reference to El. Bl. and El. is given in the report in H. L. C. which he cites. Again,

1 The term 'authorised' as applied to reports before the commencement of the Law Reports appears to be correct. One of the Vice-Chancellors at least was in the habit of positively declining to listen to any case as reported in an unauthorised report. In some, if not all, of the Courts the authorised reporter alone had any facilities given to him by the Bench. When the New Reports were started in 1862 application was made to a learned Judge for liberty for the reporter to see his written judgment: it was refused on the ground of the vested right of the authorised reporter, and that notwithstanding that (as the Judge said in his letter of refusal) some of the reporters for the New Reports were his personal friends.

where he cites Hunt v. Peake he only refers to the Law Journal in the text, while in the index of cases he refers also to the report in Johnson.

The Law and Practice of Letters Patent for Inventions. By LEWIS EDMUNDS, assisted by A. WOOD RENTON. London: Stevens & Sons, Limited. 1890. Royal 8vo. lii and 940 pp.

NOTWITHSTANDING the considerable number of good and useful books upon Patent Law-Mr. Lawson's treatise on the Acts and Rules, and Mr. Johnson's manual, of which we acknowledge a new edition elsewhere, may be cited as particularly valuable-there has not, since the publication of Hindmarch's book in 1846, been produced a comprehensive book dealing with the history and development of the law as well as the organization of the Patent Office, and the practice within and outside the office. Mr. Hindmarch's book gives a complete account of the law and procedure of his time. The main features of the law have since then been little altered, but the reforms in procedure, and still more in organization, have been great. Before 1852 the offices appear to have been arranged as if to extract the maximum amount of fees for the minimum of service. The Act of 1852 inaugurated an astonishing reform in this respect. And the Acts 1883-1888 have so increased the popularity of the business, that for a yearly average of 450 grants before 1852, there are now about 10,000. The history of all this is set forth with sufficient, and not too much, detail in the present work; full use being made of the information contained in the Reports of Parliamentary Committees and Commissions at the various stages of contemplated reforms.

The chapter upon the Patent Office, divided into sections describing the offices before 1852, the Great Seal Patent Office 1852-1883, and the Patent Office under the Act of 1883, is especially good for its condensed information.

After the early chapters, combining an historical statement of the law of monopolies with the principles of the law as settled in accordance with the Statute of James I, law and procedure are treated together in an order corresponding to the successive stages of the application, grant, and subsequent proceedings. All this forms the first part of the work, occupying 416 pages, and ending with a short but useful chapter on international and colonial arrangements.

The second part consists of the Acts 1883-1888, consolidated and annotated, and the Patent Rules 1890, &c. The third part is in the form of an Appendix consisting of the entire series of statutes, the official forms, and an epitome of foreign and colonial laws.

The whole forms a comprehensive and trustworthy guide to the law and Practice of Patents brought up to the present time.

The Practice on the Crown Side of the Queen's Bench Division of Her Majesty's High Court of Justice. (Founded on CORNER'S 'Crown Office Practice.') By FREDERICK HUGH SHORT and FRANCIS HAMILTON MELLOR. London: Stevens & Haynes. 1890. 8vo. lxviii and 835 PP.

FOUR or five years ago it was extremely difficult to find out anything about the practice of the Crown Office in such matters as Mandamus, Certiorari, Habeas Corpus, and Prohibition, by any means except personal inquiry at the Office. It was currently asserted that only one copy of 'Corner' existed, and that one consisted largely of manuscript annotations