an eviction? As if even Bismarck himself, exalted from his Wilhelmstrasse to be Irish Secretary, could have refused to let police attend evictions, after the Queen's Bench had firmly warned him that if he did he would be attached for contempt in refusing force for executing decrees at night!"

Many we feel sure will read with interest and pleasure Dean Alward's Address, in this issue, on The Triumphs of the Roman Civil Law. It is replete with learning, and covers a wide field of legal history, shewing how, as was brilliantly said, Rome, having ceased to rule the world by reason of imperial power (ratione imperii) nevertheless continued to rule it by the imperial power of reason (imperio rationis). It may nevertheless be that a certain measure of cant has attached itself to the praises of the Roman law, though there can be no question that the Romans first arrived at and gave to the world a correct conception of the true nature of private law.

whether our national system of common law and equity, as it exists to-day, purged of the absurdities of the feudal system of land-law, and of forms of action, and special pleading, is inferior to the best that Rome ever produced.

We are reminded, also, in this connection of the following interesting letter of the late Bishop Stubbs to the historian Green, written in 1871, and published in the Life of the former :

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'Bryce's Inaugural was beautifully written and clever, but I, and I suppose you, are not disposed to forget that the Civil Law,

with all its exquisite perfection, has been one of the greatest obstacles to national development in Europe, and a most pliant

has ever made its way to freedom; whilst wherever it has been introduced the extinction of popular liberty has followed sooner or later. As an agent of legal education it has its merits; but I prefer in historical training something more human and incon

sistent.'

However many civil law countries would, we fancy, claim that before 1871 they had redeemed the civil

law from such a charge; and France and Italy are, at this moment, risking all in what we may hope and pray will be the last great battle for freedom.

Our attention has been called by a valued American correspondent to a case of Cicco v. Schweizer, decided on November 13th last in the Court of Appeals of the State of New York, which is of an unusual and interesting character. Articles of agreement were entered into by the defendant and his wife with a person who was already affianced to, and was about to be married to their daughter, that, in consideration of that fact, the defendants would pay annually to the daughter, during her father's life, a certain sum of money. The marriage took place, and the payments were for some years duly made, and then discontinued, whereupon this action was brought by the husband and an assignee of the wife. The defendant argued, that as the plaintiff was already affianced to his present wife, there was no new consideration, the marriage being merely the fulfilment of an existing legal duty. In what seems to us a brilliant judgment, in which the rest of the Court concurred, Cardozo, J., gave judgment for the plaintiffs. He points out that the stormcentre about which the controversy as to consideration has raged is Shadwell v. Shadwell, 9 C. B. (N.S.) 159, which arose out of a somewhat similar situation. There an uncle, the defendant, promised to pay his nephew, the plaintiff, after marriage an annuity of £150; and at the time of the promise the nephew was already engaged. The case was heard before Erle, C.J., and Keating and Byles, JJ. The first two held the promise to be enforcible; Byles, J., dissented. Cardozo, J., says:

"The Courts of this State are committed to the view that a promise by A. to B. to induce him not to break his contract with C. is void. We have never held, however, that a like infirmity attaches to a promise by A., not merely to B., but to B. and C. jointly, to induce them not to rescind or modify a contract

which they are free to abandon. 1. The distinction between a promise by A. to B. to induce him not to break his contract with C., and a like promise to induce him not to join with C. in a voluntary rescission is not a new one."

Lord Morley's Recollections is full of good stories and other delights. Here is one. An Irish peasant

was in the dock for a violent assault. The clerk read the indictment with all its legal jargon. The prisoner to the warder: "What's all that he says?" Warder: "He says ye hit Pat Curry with yer spade on the side of his head." Prisoner: "Bedad an' I did." Warder: "Then plade not guilty." This dialogue loud and in the full hearing of the Court.

SIR, Earl Reading having concluded his labours in connection with the Allied Conference in Paris, resumes his judicial duties next week.

The advancement of the Lord Chief Justice to the dignity of an earldom has been acclaimed with pride by the profession, who have followed with special interest the great war service he has rendered to the State. Only eight years ago Earl Reading was prictising at the Bar as an ordinary King's Counsel. In 1910 he became Solicitor-General and in the same year Attorney-General. On the retirement of Lord Alverstone in the autumn of 1913, he became Lord Chief Justice of England with the title of Baron Reading. In 1916 he became a Viscount. The recent honour still further accentuates the extraordinary record created by Earl Reading. He was the first AttorneyGeneral of modern times to become a member of the Cabinet, which he entered in 1912; he was the first Lord Chief Justice to be created a Viscount while in office; and now comes his promotion to an earldomu. This latter honour, although not unprecedented, has not been conferred on a Chief Justice for considerably more than a hundred years, the last Chief Justice to bear the dignity-and the only instance in our annals -being Earl Mansfield. The dignity of an earldom has in the legal sphere usually been reserved for the Lord Chancellor, but even that high dignitary has not invariably received such distinction. In modern times every Chief Justice except Cockburn has been created a peer, although Abbott had been several years on the Bench before he became Lord Tenterden.

The rather unfortunate controversy between Sir F. E. Smith, K.C., the Attorney-General, and The Times illustrates the difference between the office of Attorney-General for England and Attorney-General for the United States. Sir F. E. Smith, in commenting on a statement in The Times that the senior Law Officer had given bad advice to the Shipping Controller, says: "You well knew, when you made this charge, that I could not publish the advice (if any) which I gave to the Shipping Controller." As is well known the opinions of the Law Officers of the Crown are confidential. They are not usually laid before Parliament, nor cited in debate, and their production has frequently been refused.

But when a minister deems it expedient that such opinions should be made known for the information of the House, he is entitled to cite them in debate. The Shipping Controller as a Minister of the Crown, or to speak more accurately, the representative of the department in the House of Commons, could not, in defending his conduct, rely on his having followed the advice (if any) of the Attorney-General. The widely different position of the Attorney-General of the United States is thus described by Viscount Bryce in his American Commonwealth:

· The Attorney-General is legal adviser of the President in those delicate questions, necessarily frequent in the Constitution of the United States, which arise as to the limits of the executive

power

and the relation of the Federal to State authority, and His opinions are frequently pub

generally in all legal matters. lished officially as a justification of the President's conduct and an indication of the view which the executive takes of its legal position and duties as to pending matters.'

Lord Morley of Blackburn, whose recently published Recollections promises to be the most important volume of belles lettres issued this year, was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn in November, 1873, but speedily forsook law for literature. "I had no prospects or connections," says he, "so I only read for a time in chambers, was called, and purchased wig and