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stopping away altogether. But probably it never entered into the imagination of Shakespeare or Gray to turn the parent of the truant (as the Elementary Education Acts 1870-80 have done) into a whipping boy. When it comes to practice, however, it is plain that a parent in the poorer classes is powerless to prevent a naughty boy not going to school when he is sent. He cannot be expected to send a servant with him, or personally conduct him like Mr. Cook; and the Court, recognising this domestic dilemma, has allowed it as a reasonable excuse for non-attendance, to the extent of refusing to inflict a fine under the Act, that the parent has done his best to get the child to go, though the only statutory excuses are distance from school, sickness, or other unavoidable cause (Belper Union v. Bailey, 9 Q. B. D. 259). But there is a great difference between punishing the innocent parent and the other alternative of sending the child to an industrial school. This alternative the magistrate may adopt, unless one of the statutory excuses is forthcoming and the jurisdiction is not ousted (as it would be in case of a fine) by there being a reasonable excuse other than the statutory excuses for non-attendance (Hewett v. Thompson, 58 L. J. Ch. 60). Any other construction would enable the insubordinate infant to frustrate the efforts of the State as well as of his parents for his welfare.

Restraining a man from using his own name is one of those droll fancies that we meet with in Alice in Wonderland. No doubt it is inconvenient for Thomas Turton & Sons, steel manufacturers of Sheffield, to have John Turton & Sons also manufacturing steel in Sheffield: rivals are always in the way, but why is a man who has made a name to be allowed, like a new sultan, to bowstring all his brethren? The peculiarity of Turton v. Turton (42 Ch. Div. 128) was the assumption of the words ' & Sons' by John Turton. If there had been no sons, if the '& Sons' had been a fancy addition like Martin Chuzzlewit's 'Co.,' or if, there being sons, the assumption had been fraudulent, as where a Day took a Martin into partnership in the blacking line (Croft v. Day, 7 Beav. 84), the case would have been one of strong suspicion, but the & Sons' was strictly in accordance with fact, and there was nothing in the evidence to show an intention by John Turton to palm off his goods as Thomas's.

Name similarity in company cases is quite different. The new company chooses its own name, and if it takes the name of another successful company it is just the same as if it pirated its trade-mark.

Warner v. Warner (Times, 29 Nov., 1889) is an example of a man making a dishonest use of his name.

An agreement to place shares is not an agreement to take shares (Gorrissen's Case, 8 Ch. App. 507). The question raised in Re Licensed Victuallers' Association (42 Ch. Div. 1) was in which category an agreement to underwrite a company came. Familiar as this operation is in the City it seems to have puzzled the Court of Appeal, till evidence was produced to show that it was a contract by the underwriter to take the shares, unless they were taken up by the public. Such shares are said in business language to be issued at a discount.' Really they are issued subject to the payment of the whole amount, but the underwriter receives a commission or brokerage. Payment of such brokerage out of the company's funds is ultra vires (Faure v. Electric Accumulator Co., 40 Ch. D. 141), but this does not affect the underwriter's liability on the shares which he has contracted to take.

A noticeable feature now in company promotion is the prominence given in

prospectuses to founders' shares. Founders' shares originated with private firms which turned themselves into companies, but they lend themselves to speculation: hence their popularity with a gambling age. The founder shareholders get the lion's share of profits if the company succeeds, but as the ordinary shareholder gets his seven or ten per cent. dividend first, he is hardly in a position to grumble.

Re Cawley & Co. (42 Ch. Div. 209) deals with several important points of company law. It decides that a director has the right of an ordinary shareholder to transfer his shares, and that the transfer cannot be stopped by an ex post facto call, but curiously does not touch the debatable question whether a director can part with his qualification (Re South London Fishmarket Co., 39 Ch. D. 324, 331: Gilbert's Case, 5 Ch. App. 559). Lord Esher gave an emphatic opinion that a call not naming time and place of payment is bad.

The Lord Chief Justice's rule of seeing what an Act of Parliament says instead of reading into it what it ought to have said, is an undoubtedly good one (Reg. v. Mansel Jones, 23 Q. B. D. 32); only it makes the assumption, that Acts of Parliament are intelligible, an assumption which is hardly warranted when it is remembered that the chief occupation of our Courts is interpreting such legislative oracles as the Divided Parishes Act, the Bills of Sale Acts, &c. &c. Among these the Infants Relief Act takes high rank for unintelligibility. The next best thing, however, to knowing what an Act does mean, is to know what it does not mean, and in this point of view Whittingham v. Murdy (60 L. T. R. 956), and Re Seager, Seeley v. Briggs (60 L. T. R. 665), are useful. For instance, the Act does not apply to an infant's contract in respect of a vested interest of a permanent character, such as a plot of land which the infant has purchased from a building society (Whittingham v. Murdy), or shares taken by him and registered in his name. If the infant wishes to repudiate such a contract, he may do so, but he must do it before or within a reasonable time after coming of age. In Re Seager, Seeley v. Briggs, a butcher boy received money from his master's customers, and did not pay it over. On the fraud being found out, the master made out an account of the sums so misappropriated, amounting to £70, which the butcher boy admitted to be correct. Afterwards the boy became entitled to a legacy of £400, and on coming of age signed a memorandum acknowledging that he owed the money, and charging it on the legacy. It was sought to set this up as a ratification and void under the Act, but Kay J. held that the Act had no application. The infant was liable ex delicto for a tort, and he gave the charge to avoid being sued in tort. Lord Kenyon, long ago, laid it down (Bristow v. Eastman, 1 Esp. 171) that an action for money had and received will be against an infant to recover money which he has embezzled. An infant is supposed to have a conscience, though he has no discretion.

An undischarged bankrupt is not in an enviable position. He cannot get credit without disclosing his insolvency, which means he cannot get it at all. If he makes a profit out of any contract, the trustee sweeps it off leaving him only the liabilities. He has no right in such a case to any indemnity (Re Clarke, Ex parte Newton, 60 L. T. R. 335). In the good old times he could collect his creditors' consents and get the adjudication annulled or his discharge granted. Now the Court is a stern censor morum. It knows that these private arrangements give opportunities for misrepresentation, private

bargains, and fraudulent preferences, and carefully scrutinizes them in the interests, not only of the creditors, but the public at large, and the bankrupt who has invited the Court's approval only finds himself made an object lesson for a lecture on commercial morality (Re Hester, Ex parte Hester, 22 Q. B. Div. 632). No doubt this is quite right. Imprisonment for debt is now only imprisonment for dishonesty, as Lord Bramwell pointed out in Stonor v. Fowle (13 App. Cas. 28). So the absolute refusal of a bankrupt's discharge is only for commercial misconduct of a grave kind, not for misfortune without misconduct. A man who keeps no accounts, goes on trading when he knows himself insolvent, admits fictitious proofs, and manufactures bills (Re Cook, 6 Morr. B. R. 224), is a person who ought not to be let loose again on the commercial world. The Court cannot, however, refuse a discharge for a misdemeanour unless it is a misdemeanour arising out of the bankruptcy (Re Brocklehurst, 6 Morr. B. R. 138), nor can it suspend the discharge and also grant it conditionally (Re Huggins, Ex parte Huggins, 22 Q. B. D. 277), though it may do either. There is a ray of comfort here.

What an absolute refusal of discharge is to a bankrupt, striking off the roll is to a solicitor. It is the termination of his professional career, Têλos, as Aristotle would say. There is no power to readmit the delinquent (Re Lamb, 23 Q. B. Div. 477). The legislature evidently thought such a salutary severity necessary to maintain a high standard of respectability. What with this disciplinary jurisdiction (illustrated also in Re Dangar's Trusts, 41 Ch. D. 178) and the control over costs which Re Park, Cole v. Park (41 Ch. Div. 326) reveals the public ought to feel reassured. In the matter of costs the Court is indeed thrice armed against overcharge. First of all there is the jurisdiction to tax under the Solicitors' Act, then there is the inherent jurisdiction of the Court over its officers' conduct, including charges, and finally, if the costs are claimed against a deceased's estate, the Court investigates the claim like other claims and invokes the taxing master as an expert. Nor has a solicitor much chance of coming in for or keeping a gift from a client unless he is prepared with unequivocal evidence of confirmation after the influence arising from the relationship has caused to exist (Tyars v. Alsop, 61 L. T. R. 8). There a lady client marked her grateful sense of professional services by a gift of £1000 out of money recovered by the solicitor, but the Court of Appeal was not satisfied that the alleged confirmation exhibited that fixed, deliberate, and unbiassed determination that the transaction should not be impeached,' which Turner L.J. deemed requisite in Wright v. Vanderplank (8 D. M. & G. 147). Rochefoucauld's advice, Treat your friend as a possible enemy,' should be interpreted by a solicitor, Treat your client donor as a possible plaintiff.

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Allbutt v. The General Council of Medical Education, 23 Q. B. Div. 400, is for practical purposes the most important of the cases to be found in the Law Reports for November. The Medical Council, acting under the Medical Act, 21 & 22 Vict. c. 90, after due enquiry adjudged a medical practitioner to have been guilty of infamous conduct in a professional respect, and directed the Registrar to efface his name from the register. The minutes of the Council were published containing a report of their proceedings, comprising a statement that the name of the practitioner had been removed from the register on the ground of professional misconduct, the nature of which was set forth. In an action for libel brought by the practitioner, the

judge, Pollock B., held that the Council had, under the Act, jurisdiction to deal with the matter, that the Court had no power to review the decision of the Council, and that the publication of the minutes was privileged.

On each and all of these points the Court of Appeal has now given judg ment that Baron Pollock's view of the law was right. Any other decision would have been a public calamity, for it would have nullified the power of the Council to check professional misconduct on the part of medical practitioners.

Fry v. Moore, 23 Q. B. Div. 395, decides only a point of practice, but, like many practice cases, involves the recognition of important principles. The case, in the first place, affirms the broad and clearly sound maxim, that where a defendant cannot be personally served with a writ at the time when it is issued, there cannot be substituted service. In other words, a plaintiff cannot by any indirect means enlarge his power of proceeding against a defendant who is out of England. The case, in the next place, decides that where the order for substituted service is irregular only, the irregularity is waived by the appearance of the defendant and by his asking for an order that the plaintiff should deliver a statement of claim.

Walker v. Hobbs, 23 Q. B. D. 458, is important. It proves the readiness of the Courts to give full effect to laws made for the real or supposed benefit of the poor. The Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1885 (48 & 49 Vict. c. 62), s. 12, makes it an implied condition' of any contract for the letting of any house, or part thereof, for 'habitation by persons of the working classes,' that the house is in all respects reasonably fit for human habitation. Walker v. Hobbs decides that where this condition is broken, the working man who has hired part of the house which is not reasonably fit for human habitation has a right of action against the landlord. Persons curious to note the way in which changes of language mark changes of opinion will observe that the lax expression 'persons of the working classes' has now obtained both Parliamentary and judicial recognition. Observers further of the variations in the phases of popular sentiment may ask themselves whether Parliament did, or did not, in 1885, intend that a house built, say for the habitation of hard-worked clerks or curates, may without legal risk to the landlord be unfit for human habitation, whilst a house built for artisans must be reasonably fit for habitation by human beings? What, again, are we to say as to the conditions on which a landlord lets to a workman part of a house which, though now used as a poor man's lodging-house, was two centuries ago built for a peer or a merchant?

In re Whitaker, 42 Ch. Div. 119, is a case more interesting to casuists than to lawyers. T leaves by will the whole of his fortune amounting to £400,000 to 4, and dies suddenly of apoplexy. When 7''s papers come into his hands, he discovers that T, the night before his death, has drawn but not executed another will whereby he leaves his property, not to A, but to B. There is further every reason to suppose that if 7' had lived a day longer he would have executed his second will. Neither A nor B have any special claim upon T. What ought A as an honest and honourable man to do under the circumstances? It is a question over which casuistry might employ itself for days without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. What A does is more natural than logical. He gives B as a present a promissory

note for £50,000 payable by instalments. When shortly afterwards becomes insane, the judges of the Chancery Division are applied to by B to carry A's gift into effect. They think it right to do so, but whoever wants to avoid a total misunderstanding of the case must observe carefully the Court's ground of action. The Lords Justices point out that no debt is due from A to B, for the note is nothing but a promise without a consideration, but they accede to B's application, because A being insane, it is the business of the Court to carry out an honourable intention of the lunatic's formed while he was sane. In one respect B has been lucky. If A had lost his life instead of his reason, A's executors could not, it is submitted, have paid B the £1,000 still due on the note. But after all the case is one, as we have said, rather more interesting to moralists than to lawyers. Why did not A either treat the will as a nullity, or carry it into effect? The enquiry is not easy to answer.

Mitchell v. Simpson, 23 Q. B. D. 373, is a case of little practical, but of some speculative interest. It provides something like judicial answers to two questions about each of which controversy is possible.

First. What is the true nature of so-called 'imprisonment for debt,' under the Debtors' Act, 1869?

Answer. It is not in strictness' imprisonment for debt,' but imprisonment for a debtor's contumaciously refusing to pay a debt after he is proved to have the means of payment.

Secondly. What is the right way of construing a clause of a consolidation Act, such as the Sheriff's Act, 1887 (50 & 51 Vict. c. 55), sect. 14, sub-sect. 1, when the clause re-enacts provisions which have been in existence for years? Answer. The proper course is, in general, to give to the re-enacted enactment the sense which it bore in the repealed Act whence it comes.

Neither of these replies are given totidem verbis by Denman J. and Charles J., but they are fairly deducible from the judgments of these learned judges, and will be found by any one who carefully considers the matter to be of an importance far beyond that of the point actually determined in Mitchell v. Simpson.

Smith v. Wood, 23 Q. B. D. 380, turns, like Mitchell v. Simpson, on the construction of a statute. Its general effect is to determine that a coalmerchant may escape penalties for selling coals under weight because his carman weighs the coal improperly. The decision, which rests in fact upon Meredith v. Holman, 16 M. & W. 798, may likely enough be sound, but it leads to a result repugnant to common sense, and suggests to any student of the reports, not for the first time, that the least satisfactory portion is that large and unfortunately increasing part of it created by judicial decisions upon statute. Judicial legislation and parliamentary legislation have each considerable, though different merits. But laws engendered through the laxity of parliamentary language, interpreted by the refinement of judicial subtlety, are apt to combine the faults both of parliamentary law and of judgemade law. Nothing does more to damp the enthusiasm for codification which some years ago prevailed amongst all educated lawyers than observation of the practical results ensuing from the judicial interpretation of statutes.

Johnson v. Lindsay, 23 Q. B. Div. 508, 58 L. J. Q. B. 581, deserves study by statesmen at least as much as by lawyers. It proves to any one who will consider the matter from a broad point of view that the celebrated doctrine of

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