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call would come. He was a son of the Parliament House, his father having been a Depute-clerk of Session and at one time clerk to Lord Colonsay.

Notes from London.

THE TEMPLE, 30th September, 1907. THE meeting of the Associated Chambers of Commerce at Liverpool has had several subjects of legal interest before it worth noting. Commercial men are the backbone of the law Courts, and they are severe critics and grumblers about legal matters, if it is right to call grumblers those who have a good case, because they do not let you cease to hear of it. The Chambers of Commerce in England have for many years been grumbling in this sense about the law Courts. It was the London Chamber of Commerce which some years ago grumbled to such good purpose that the Commercial Court was set up for the benefit of London commercial men, and, to a certain extent, it has acted well. Besides this, the Chamber took the law in its own hands, as it were, and tried to do without the Courts by establishing a Chamber of Arbitration, which started with much vigour, but, I believe, has hardly had the success which at first was anticipated. It had special advantages which every provincial Chamber has not to anything like the same extent, so that, if the plan did not flourish in London, it was not so likely to succeed better anywhere else. We may gather that this has happened from the fact that the Chambers are still grumbling at the condition of business in the law Courts, and emphasising what the Attorney-General recently said in the debate about the creation of more judges as to the denial of justice. But there is a new note in the resolution on the subject which was passed at Liverpool. Never before have the Associated Chambers included the hard case of Scotland in the hard case of England, but now they have resolved that the statistics of the Supreme Courts in both countries show the desirability of some radical change being made. This is intended to embrace Scotland as well as England, and it was altered from its original form on the proposition of Mr. J. Milne Henderson, a representative from Edinburgh.

Another resolution of importance which implicitly contains a suspicion of the ordinary legal machinery for settling commercial disputes dealt with the subject of international commercial arbitrations. It was to the effect that the leading

Chambers of Commerce in the principal European countries should be invited to consider the desirability of establishing an international arbitration code for the settlement of disputes between buyers and sellers, and other questions arising on business contracts and agreements. Also that arbitration should be adopted for the settling of commercial disputes in the interest of trade and commerce, and that it be recommended to the Chambers of Commerce throughout the kingdom to make known in their districts their readiness to appoint arbitrators for the settlement of such disputes.

I hope I am not wandering too far from the ordinary topics of these notes in noting also a letter from the well-known Professor Holland in regard to the proposals by the Hague Peace Conference for the establishment of an international prize Court. Prize Courts are not tribunals with which Englishmen have been familiar for many years, but one can never tell how soon they might become less rare and a good deal of prize law once more be heard of. There has been considerable discussion at the Hague on the question of selecting the judges. The establishment of the Court would imply that each nation's judges would cease to be, as they have hitherto been, the sole judges of the captures made in a naval war. But, besides this, there is the question of what law they would administer. There is so much uncertainty about this that it seemed to follow that the judges would have so much discretion left to them that they would practically become the chief creators of the prize law of the future. It is on this point that Sir T. E. Holland has been writing, and he makes some interesting observations on the difference between the position of English judges working out the development of the common law and the judges who would sit in the international tribunal. He says, "The beneficent action of English judges in developing the common law of England may possibly be cited in its favour," but the analogy is delusive. "The Courts of a given country in evolving new rules of law are almost certain to do so in accordance with the views of public policy generally entertained in that country. Should they act otherwise, their error can be promptly corrected by the national Legislature. Far different would be the effect of the decision of an international Court, in which, though it might run directly counter to British theory and practice, Great Britain would have bound herself beforehand to acquiesce. The only quasi-legislative body by which the ratio decidendi of such a decision could be disallowed would be an international gathering, in which British views might find scanty support.

The development of a system of national law by national judges offers no analogy to the working of an international Court, empowered at its free will and pleasure, to disregard the views of a sovereign power as to the proper rule to be applied in cases as to which international law gives no guidance. In such cases the ultimate adjustment of differences of view is the appropriate work, not of a law Court, but of diplomacy." The conclusion of the argument is that the international prize Court should not be set up before a general international agreement is reached as to the law which the Court is to interpret. If, however, the Court is not to be established until this happens, there are so many differences of view that, if Professor Holland's objections prevail, it will be many years before an international prize Court is a feasible project. It is impossible, of course, to guess at what the Hague Conference may do, or how our Government might act in presence of the dilemma pointed out by Professor Holland. The subject is an ambitious one for these notes, but I thought I might venture to mention it, as it undoubtedly contains points interesting to lawyers.

Whenever Lord Lindley appears on the scene we may be sure of a legal disquisition which will be anything but agreeable to the party in a controversy against which he throws the weight of his authority. His last appearance before the present one, which comes of the recent Deceased Wife's Sister Act, was on the occasion of the trade union legislation, but this was rather a matter of expediency than of law. In any case, he writes so vigorously that one would wonder why he has retired from regular work if he had not explained that it is not the work but the very regularity of it that he shrinks from. It is a confession which has to be made by every one as the years roll on. I do not suppose that the deceased wife's sister question is so fiercely argued in Scotland as it is here, though I have seen the statement that there is the same opposition between what is called the law of the Church and the law of the Courts in both countries. The point in dispute is whether a clergyman who marries parties under the new law can be subject to any ecclesiastical censure or deprivation which would have any legal effect. There is no doubt that many extremists against the new law believe that something more than moral pressure can be brought to bear on those clergymen who perform the marriage ceremony in a church. In the House of Lords, whilst the bill was on, Lord James of Hereford asked the Archbishop of Canterbury what, if any, effect ecclesiastical censure would have, and the Archbishop

confessed that he had not the slightest idea. As to deprivation of any legal rights which a clergyman may have if he performs the ceremony, it is hardly possible for any lawyer, after two minutes' consideration, to suppose that a clergyman can suffer any disability for doing what the law does not forbid him from doing, and at the lowest this is the effect of the new law, though it does not expressly impose on him the duty. Lord Lindley admits that the Deceased Wife's Sister Marriage Act is not well drawn, and, like almost all modern Acts of Parliament which are the result of compromise, is by no means so consistent and clear as it should be, but about the effect of it he has no doubt. There is one passage in it which I should like to quote in the relation between the Church and the State. It is long, but cannot well be summarised, and I think Scottish readers, who have always been in a good deal of controversy about Church and State, will be glad to see what a great English lawyer has to say about it. I may add that it is in spirit exactly the same as that which animated the speech of Lord James of Hereford in the House of Lords. Lord Lindley says, "The law enforced in the ecclesiastical Courts is the law of the realm, and no other. The law so enforceable may be historically traced to a foreign origin, and be based on the Corpus Juris Civilis or the Corpus Juris Canonici, or even on passages in the Old or the New Testament; but, whatever their origin may have been, the ecclesiastical laws enforceable in this realm are so enforceable because they have been incorporated into, and have become part of, the laws of this country. The ecclesiastical laws of this country, like all other of its laws, can be modified or repealed by Act of Parliament, or by any other authority to whom Parliament may have delegated its powers in this respect, and an authority delegated by one Act of Parliament can be revoked by another. There are not two law-giving powers in this realm, but only one, and, when such expressions as the law of the Church' and the canon law' are used, it is important to bear in mind that for all legal purposes in this country no laws are recognised as laws or enforceable as such unless they become, and are part and parcel of, its laws, and so far only as they have become and remain so." It has to be seen whether, if there should be any actual case in the Courts where this sense of law would undoubtedly be held, the Church that objects to it would adopt the only remedy remaining to it-to sever itself from the State and administer its own "laws ' to its own adherents. Some prophesy that this will be the result of the new Act. Perhaps I ought to say that a case is most likely

to arise if any clergyman refuses the communion to parishioners who have made a marriage under the Act, and some clergymen are talking about doing this.

For any reader who, like myself, amuses himself at times with a novel with a pleasant diversity of crime and law, I might mention one which has sped a few hours for me by the late Mr. Christie Murray. It is called "In His Grip," and it will have the additional interest for Glasgow readers that what may be called the fortuitous villain is a supposititious Lord Provost of Glasgow, who is a substantial pillar or leading light in the Presbyterian Church-what branch, I believe, is not mentioned. But what chiefly attracted my attention was a curious mistake as to the law which runs through the whole story. I need not explain what it is, but leave any reader to spot" it for himself. It shows that Mr. Murray was not so careful about getting his law right as was George Eliot when she made use of that remarkable legal puzzle in "Silas Marner." Even Trollope was curiously slipshod in Orley

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Farm."

INCORPORATED SOCIETY OF LAW AGENTS IN SCOTLAND. THE twenty-third annual meeting of this Society was held within the County Council Chambers, Inverness, on Friday, 27th September- Mr. D. M. M. Milligan, advocate, in the chair. There was a large attendance. Election of Office-bearers. On the motion of Mr. George D. Ballingall, W.S., Edinburgh, seconded by Professor Richard Brown, Glasgow, Mr. D. M. M. Milligan was unanimously elected President for the ensuing year.

On the motion of Mr. Robert Smith, Dundee, seconded by Mr. William Cochran, Glasgow, Mr. James W. Whitelaw, Dumfries, was unanimously re-elected Vice-President.

For the vacancies in the Council the following were elected :James Brown, Stirling; James Duff, S.S.C., Edinburgh; James Glen, Greenock; William Mackay, Inverness; Hugh Stewart, Elgin; and Robert S. Walker, Greenock. Dr. J. L. Barty, Dunblane, was re-elected Secretary, and Mr. F. B. Anderson, C.A., Edinburgh, was re-appointed

Auditor.

President's Address.-The President, in the course of a brief address, referred to the useful work that had been done in past years by the Society, and said that great though the work was which had been accomplished, much more might be done if the Council had at its back the whole, or nearly the whole, of the profession and the additional funds which such increase would bring. They would never lose sight of the main object of the Society's existence, viz., the promotion of the unification of the profession. The Solicitors (Scotland) Bill ought to have the first place in their programme, as it was by far the most important which had been introduced so far as the profession and the public were concerned. The fear that the creation of a representative central body would prejudicially affect any of the existing provincial societies was, he was satisfied, an absolutely groundless one, as was borne out by the experience of both England and Ireland.