including Mr. James Young, the Sheriff-clerk depute at Lanark; Mr. George Gray, clerk of the peace for Glasgow city and Lower Ward of Lanarkshire; Mr. John Smith, clerk of the Upper Ward District Committee of the Lanark County Council; Mr. James Anderson, county clerk of Inverness-shire; and Mr. John Boyle, senior Sheriff-clerk depute of Lanarkshire.

Of retired officials there have passed away during the year Mr. W. A. Brown, formerly Sheriff-Substitute at Aberdeen, and in the end of the year, as we have seen, Mr. Andrew Rutherfurd, ex-Sheriff of the Lothians and Peebles; Mr. A. D. Veitch, assistant clerk of Justiciary; and Mr. Robert Whyte, formerly procurator-fiscal at Forfar. Of town-clerks, Mr. Dickie, of Irvine, was one of the most notable removals during the year, and there also passed away Mr. Johnstone, town-clerk of Langholm; Mr. Cranmer, who held a similar office in Milngavie; and Mr. Logan, in Wishaw. During the During the year the Society of Writers to the Signet have had to mourn the loss of such leading men as Sir William Menzies, agent of the Church of Scotland and chairman of the Arizona Copper Company; that greatly esteemed lawyer, Mr. J. P. Wood, formerly Professor of Conveyancing; Mr. Hew Hamilton Crichton, one of the old school of family lawyers; and also Mr. Robert Beatson, W.S., who was one of the best and busiest process agents in Court in the sixties and seventies. Of the S.S.C. Society, some leading men have departed, including Mr. John Glover, noted above, at the age of eighty-four; Mr. William Officer, clerk to the Convention of Royal Burghs, at the age of eighty; Mr. Peter Simpson, formerly clerk to Lord Mure, at seventy-six; and Mr. Duncan Forbes Dallas, a leading member of the Society, at a comparatively early age.

In the Court of Session the Extractor, Mr. W. B. Glen, succumbed to a long illness in the month of August, while earlier in the year that very able and popular official, Mr. James G. Currie, depute Commissary Clerk, died owing to an attack of paralysis. There was also the passing on of such prominent old and middle-aged men as Mr. J. H. Robertson, of Glasgow; Mr. James Henderson, of Kilmarnock; Mr. Fraser, of Aberdeen; Mr. Sparks, of the same city; Mr. George Grier, of Hawick; and now his partner, Mr. Carmichael, has also died in the prime of life after a very short illness. Then there were Mr. George Rule, of Inverness, and Mr. James M'Rosty, of Crieff, the two oldest procurators in Scotland; Mr. Andrew Burt, of Dunfermline; and Mr. Roderick Scott, of Inverness, who was long clerk to Lord Advocate E. S. Gordon. Among the less known names in the death list of the year are Mr. John Watt,

junior, Aberdeen (a strenuous fighter); Mr. William Buchan, Peebles; Mr. Joseph Shaughnessy, Glasgow (another very keen Sheriff Court lawyer); Mr. J. A. Welch, Cupar; Mr. James Campbell, Kilwinning; Mr. James Boyd, Glasgow; Mr. John Muir, Paisley; Mr. W. S. Davidson, a young and promising solicitor of Perth; and Mr. W. O. Clazy, Glasgow.

During their year's tenure of office the Liberal party have had a few vacancies to fill up, viz., the Sheriffship of Fife, where Mr. Cullen succeeded Mr. Younger; the Sheriff-Substituteship of Stirling, where Mr. Andrew Mitchell succeeded Sheriff Buntine, resigned; Mr. Gardiner Millar, secretary to the Lord Advocate, succeeded Sheriff Henderson, and Mr. Lamb became secretary to the Lord Advocate. There was also one macership vacated, due to the compulsory retirement at the age limit of Mr. Heron, who was succeeded by Mr. Scott, one of Mr. Shaw's Border constituents. The vacancy in the Extractor's office, due to the retirement of Mr. Glen, was filled up by the appointment of Mr. Edward P. Thomson, W.S.

The decision of the First Division in the Chief Constable of Edinburgh's case was rather of the nature of a surprise, for it was expected that some kind of inquiry, either by proof or trial, might be allowed, but the judges have construed the statutory powers and rights of the chief constable in a very rigid manner, and held that the implied hardship in the mode of inquiry into the pursuer's conduct, whereby the chief constable was both prosecutor and judge, though it may be looked on as inequitable, was yet one of the risks incident to employment in the police service. I doubt if the case can go further, as the appeal must have the leave of the Court, unless leave be got from the Appeal Committee of the House of Lords to sue in forma pauperis.

I am glad to see in the Yoker will case that Lord Johnston's judgment has been recalled, and that the conduct of Mr. Mackinlay and his legal confrère in its execution has been proved to have been in all respects satisfactory and prudent, and that all reasonable precautions had been taken in getting it executed.

I should imagine the good people of Oban are mightily relieved by the Second Division decision in the M'Caig will case, by which they held the will quite ineffective by the nature of its provisions. The prospect of colossal statues of the M'Caig family planted in all parts of Oban and the surrounding landscape was too horrible for the contemplation of those resident in this, the Charing Cross of the West. But yet, after the extraordinary judgment of the House of Lords

in the Morgan will case in the end of the fifties, where a will was sustained written on scraps of paper, many of them almost illegible and self-contradictory, it was supposed the M'Caig will, however absurd, would stand. However, in the Morgan case the result was for the public good, and resulted in the creation of the Dundee Morgan Hospital, while Mr. M'Caig only wanted to perpetuate and exalt himself and his male relatives in granite or marble so as to disfigure the Oban landscape. Possibly that makes all the difference in arriving at the decision now given.

Just as I close this letter comes the sad news of the death of Mr. A. W. Black, W.S., and M.P. for Banffshire, through the appalling railway collision in Forfarshire. Mr. Black was in the prime of life and amid a career of professional energy and great public activity. Whatever differences of opinion existed here as to his fitness for political life and his past parliamentary career, there were none as to his great ability and force as a lawyer, while his zeal as a United Free Churchman was very conspicuous in the recent crisis of that Church's history, and particularly in the parliamentary conferences which preceded the passing of the Churches Act of last year. Shortly after the death of one of his partners, the late Sir William Menzies, last year, the copartnery of Menzies, Black, & Menzies, W.S., was dissolved, and during a portion of the past year the deceased carried on with energy and ability his legal business under the firm of A. W. Black & Co., having, in the course of last summer, assumed as a partner Mr. Mitchell, one of the staff of the dissolved firm. During last general election he met with a motor accident, so that his usually assiduous attention to his parliamentary duties had to be relaxed; but he was present for some time at Westminster during the autumn session just closed.

Notes from London.

THE TEMPLE, 31st December, 1906. IT is curious to think of all the time, money, and labour that have been spent in fighting the West Riding education case from its first start in the Divisional Court, then to the Appeal Court, and finally to the House of Lords. What a good thing it is for the legal profession that doubtful points of law, quite well known to be ambiguous and always lying in wait for the unlucky litigant, cannot be promptly cleared up by any legislative machinery we have, but must wait until two people get quarrelling about it before it can be settled. In a case that arose recently, however, quite a different plan was followed

And yet it is

It is not like

It leaves

from that which governed the proceedings in the West Riding case. A difficulty arose about the construction of an Act regulating the proceedings of justices in regard to licensing. If litigation, which had begun, had been continued, all the administration of this branch of law was threatened with disorganisation. Therefore, without waiting until the matter had been taken through all the Courts, a short bill was brought in and the doubt settled. It was quite impossible, of course, that a similar step could have been taken with the education difficulty about the obligation to pay for denominational teaching. There was a kind of race between the House of Lords as a branch of Parliament and the House as a tribunal which should settle the matter; but even litigation in the end proved itself a speedier process than legislation; and so we have added to the reports of decided cases the one which has been the most interesting legal event of the current month. by no means as important as it is interesting. the other great case decided by the Lords which had such serious results on ecclesiastical affairs in Scotland. things in statu quo instead of upsetting them in the manner of an earthquake. There was, in fact, hardly any surprise about it. In a vague kind of way the general feeling was that the House of Lords would not take the same view as the Court of Appeal, and, if the truth were told, this was because in a matter of this kind politics were expected to be a disturbing element. It is very satisfactory that these surmises have proved to be incorrect, and that our judges have given another proof of what they also gave in the Scottish case, that they have no desire to go out of their province of strict interpreters of the law, and that they decline the rôle of legislators, acting on their own views of what the law ought to be for the public benefit. The judges of the House of Lords can be divided without hesitation into Liberal or Conservative, and yet they were unanimous in giving a decision which, though it was in favour of the Attorney-General, was unwelcome to the Attorney-General's colleagues. It is not often that the Attorney-General is placed in such a curious position.

The judge who gets most kudos out of the business is Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton, whose dissenting judgment was followed by the Lords. He happened to be a Liberal, and this made his judgment at the time noticeable. The year which began in trouble with him has ended in a very gratifying event for him. Human nature being what it is, one wonders whether a judge who has scored in this way really improves his personal relations with his colleagues if they are not very good to begin

with. In any case, the Lord Justice is not a very fastidious or sensitive person; but, after all, he has been fortunate.

The legislation of the last few months of the year is remarkable for the interest it has from the professional point of view. Many Acts of Parliament give rise to no speculation as to what their effects may be on litigation. An Education Act, for instance, is never expected to be much heard of in the Courts, though it may have vast consequences in administration, or on the national life and character. But a Trades Dispute Bill or a Workmen's Compensation Act have a direct bearing on the prospects of the legal profession, as they affect either favourably or adversely the amount of business likely to be taken into Court. So, again, an Act like the Public Trustee Act, though it has little direct bearing on litigation, has a good deal of interest to the legal profession, especially to solicitors, as it seems to affect adversely a branch, if not the most important branch, of their professional work. Some of the heaviest litigation of recent years has been that arising out of trade union law the Taff Vale case, the Glamorgan miners and the Denbigh miners, and others less heard of, that have engaged all the Courts up to the House of Lords. Are we to hear no more of Allan v. Flood, Stanley v. Leatham, the "Mogul" case, and are all those subtle disquisitions and disputes interminable and obscure to become as purely legal antiquities as black-letter law? It would seem so. The Attorney-General's plan might only have scotched them, but the Lord Chancellor's must have killed them outright; and there seems no excuse even for their ghosts to return to vex the Courts. The peculiar characteristic of trade union law has always been its technical legal character, and the autonomy of the trade unions of thirty or forty years ago was peculiarly associated with the work of legal draughtsmen like the late Mr. Justice Wright and Mr. Frederic Harrison, or in the House with lawyers like Lord Cross, Sir William Harcourt, and Lord James of Hereford; and the Lord Chancellor has always been one of their zealous coadjutors. It is curious that Lord James, who thought, thirty years ago, that he was making trade unions not liable to be sued, should be protesting against this result now. And yet he is not inconsistent. Thirty years ago no one would have dreamed of enabling trade unions to be sued and giving them the compensating privileges of corporations. But since then the Judicature Acts have made associations that could not be sued liable to be sued as if they were corporations, and Lord James' legal conscience would not allow him to exempt trade unions from a liability which similar associations are now under. But