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declares that, if she shall marry, the annuity shall be forfeited, the condition is void, and she may yet marry as often as she will, and retain her annuity." We are unable to see the logical necessity for a distinction, of which the absurdity was apparent to the Lord Justice. We hold that a trifling modification of the doctrine applicable to conditions would suffice to meet the case of limitations.

Where a void condition purports to bring an estate to a premature end, the law interferes, and, by ignoring the condition, allows the estate to run its course. Now let us suppose that an estate purports to come to an end, not through the instrumentality of a void condition, but by the occurrence of an event which the Law has decided ought not to be permitted to have an injurious effect on the interest of the donee, surely the simple and obvious plan of vindicating the policy of the Law would be to ignore the occurrence of the event, and to let the estate run on just as if nothing had happened; if a gift is limited until marriage, let it run on in spite of marriage, just as if the donee had remained single. We venture to say there is not a man of ordinary intelligence, outside the profession, who would hesitate for five minutes in casting aside, as so much hurtful rubbish, all the fine-spun distinctions between conditions and limitations which have been at once the delight and perplexity of the Bench from time immemorial, and by means of which the law of conditions in restraint of marriage has been deprived of every claim to indulgence. To the vice of perplexing and unnecessary distinctions, resulting in absurd and contradictory decisions, must be added this, the sufficient condemnation of any Law, however perfect in every other respect, namely, that all its provisions may with ease and certainty be evaded. In vain do the Judges decide, in vain do Counsel argue, if every principle contended for by the latter and enunciated by the former can be set aside by the machinations of a draftsman. ROBERT Collier.

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II. THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY

A

OF OXFORD FOR THE TEACHING OF LAW
AND HISTORY.*

Ta time when Royal Commissions are looming on a not very distant horizon, it is well to arise and gird oneself to the task of rendering their projects of Reform innocuous by meeting them half-way. Such will probably be the impression produced on many minds by the "Statement of the Requirements of the University of Oxford,” adopted by the Hebdomadal Council on the 19th of March, 1877, and immediately afterwards published at the Clarendon Press. Yet it would be unjust to the University to assume that fear of the unknown possibilities of a Royal Commission had been the only, or even, perhaps, the principal cause of the publication of the Requirements. Some such document was called for by the very nature of the movement which has been spreading yearly more and more, transforming many features of the University, and of the life and the teaching within its precincts. So greatly have the men of movement prevailed that one Professor bursts forth into indignant sarcasm on the probability of the "venerable University being knocked to pieces, and reconstructed on a Continental model," with the "barbarous" Continental mode of Professorial and Sub-Professorial teaching. Our object, however, is not scathing sarcasm, but friendly observation and criticism, especially on those portions of the scheme of the Requirements dealing with the University teaching of Law and History. We have, for ourselves, always regretted the

* Statement of the Requirements of the University adopted by the Heb. domadal Council, on the 19th March, 1877, with the Papers upon which it was founded. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1877.

separation of those studies into two schools, coincident, as it was, with the great and sudden expansion of the examinations in the Faculty of Law, for the Degree of B.C.L. We do not share Professor Chandler's intense dislike to all the features of Continental University teaching, and, in regard to Jurisprudence and History, it is patent to our minds that many useful hints may be derived from the mere fact of the existence, beyond the Channel, of Chairs which have no counterparts in our own Universities. There are nineteen Chairs of Law in Paris, and ten in Toulouse; how many can we boast of in Oxford or Cambridge? There is a Chair of Constitutional Law in the University of Naples, but there is none in the University of Oxford.

Here, at least, is a point in which we must yield the palm to our Continental friends. They have, with all the "barbarism" which some English Professors can alone see in their system, outstripped us in the race of providing for the growing wants of students. Shall we make no effort to come up to them? In Paris, as has been already pointed out in these pages,* an entire supplementary scheme of instruction has been devised, filling up any gaps that may be left in the State Universities, by means of the Free School of Political Sciences. Here men of eminence in their respective branches have been giving courses on Administrative Law, Diplomacy and International Law, Comparative Legislation, Constitutional History, and other kindred subjects. Where are we in this race? It is to be feared, very far behind.

The "Statement of Requirements," which we take as the basis of our present remarks, originated, we learn, in a series of questions sent round by the Vice-Chancellor, in the course of the year 1873, to the various Boards of Studies and Professors, by direction of a Committee of the Hebdomadal Council.

*Law Magazine and Review, Jan., 1875.

The questions were these:

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"1. Is the present number of Professors sufficient for the studies of the School with which your Board is connected?

"2. Is the distribution of subjects among such Professors satisfactory?

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3.-Will it be expedient to make a distinction between Professors-in-Chief and Readers (or Assistant-Professors)? And, if so, what should be the relation of the AssistantProfessors to the Professors-in-Chief?

4. Are there any subjects required in your School for which it might be expedient to make temporary provision only?"

The replies elicited by this circular occupy the greater part of the pamphlet before us, but there is a valuable, though somewhat confusing Appendix, consisting of the Reports and Letters submitted to a fresh Committee of Council, appointed in Easter Term, 1876. The effect of this is that just as we think we have grasped the views of the several Boards and Professors, we find we have yet a further study to make of their later expressions of opinion.

Many of the Reports and Replies are very amusingly characteristic. Unfortunately, with some of the most characteristic and amusing we are not here directly concerned. Otherwise, we should have been glad to draw attention to the curt irony with which Professor Monier Williams and Professor Max Müller alike express their practically identical views on Sanskrit and Philology at Oxford, the latter enclosing, for the Vice-Chancellor's benefit, a pamphlet, showing what the University of St. Petersburg does for the studies of his Chair. But it does fall distinctly within our province to note that in the Report of 1876 the Board of Studies for the School of Literæ Humaniores recommend the creation of an additional Professor and Reader in the Department of Ancient History, for the

express purpose of including "Ancient Law and the History and Comparison of Ancient Institutions" in the curriculum of the public University teaching for that School. And we are glad to see that this recommendation has been endorsed by the Council in their official Statement of Requirements. We feel that we can say this without any disparagement of the value to the University of the Lectures of the Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence. For it is obvious that an additional Professor and Reader dealing with some of the subjects usually treated by Sir Henry Maine would, while not confining themselves to the same track, give a fresh impulse to the pursuit of Archaic Law, and impart a steadiness to its study by undergraduates such as cannot be expected under a necessarily somewhat sporadic system of Lectures. This intermittent character of some of the work of an otherwise very valuable Professoriate is partly due to non-residence, and it is an evil which would lead us greatly to deprecate such a change as is half suggested by Dr. Bernard in relation to the Chair which he rendered so useful by his own residence, as well as illustrious by his eminence. The Assistant-Professors and Readers (with the exception of occasional or extraordinary Professors and Readers) would necessarily be resident, and that is, to our mind, an argument in their favour.

How high an estimate the University of Oxford puts upon an increased number of Lectures may be guessed from the fact that it has given the present incumbent of the Regius Chair of Civil Law an increase of £300 a-year, for five years, to his permanent endowment of £135; “on condition of his delivering annually two courses of Lectures, not fewer than twenty in the whole." Of course, it is to be understood that the Regius Professor of Civil Law is always a distinguished person, the value of whose time should be calculated somewhat on the scale of that of a Sir William Gull in the medical world. Otherwise the condition annexed to the increased stipend might

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