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notice, to master the terms of Foreign Law, whether relating to Jurisprudence or Procedure. In some cases he might, we think, have found a safe rendering when he has preferred to resort to an explanation. "Vis Major," for instance, would surely exactly have represented "force majeure," and have been immediately intelligible to an English reader. We hope, that in his next edition, M. Goirand will add a Table of Contents of the several chapters of his Commentary, and so facilitate the readiness of reference to a work which we commend alike to the lawyer, the banker, the merchant, and the many classes practically interested in Commercial Law.

The Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts, with Decisions, Forms, and Table of Costs. By ARTHUR JEPSON, of Lincoln's Inn, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. Stevens & Sons. 1880.

Mr. Jepson has produced a work which cannot fail to prove of great utility to the practitioner. It consists in fact of a collective Digest of the body of Judicial Decisions on the Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts which has grown up since the passing of the principal Act in 1845, but so arranged as to give the Case Law and Statute Law in immediate juxtaposition. The Acts of 1845, 1860 and 1869 are printed in extenso, each section being followed in large type by an intercalated Digest of the cases bearing upon it. A table of "Costs usually allowed" in proceedings under the Acts is appended, for which the author acknowledges his indebtedness to Mr. Scott's wellknown work. This is followed by a useful collection of Forms, 76 in number, gathered from various members of the profession. A full Index renders the varied contents of the volume easily accessible.

The Law of Highways in England and Wales, with Notes of Cases, Forms, and a Copious Index. By T. BAKER, of the Inner Temple, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. Stevens & Sons. 1880.

Mr. Baker has accomplished a very useful work which will no doubt be appreciated by Magistrates, Chairmen of Quarter Sessions, Members of Local Highway Boards, and others who have to deal with the important questions connected with the Queen's Highway throughout England and Wales. We like Mr. Baker's book much better than his history, which, as set

forth in his Preface, is scarcely on a level with modern research. To say that "in a Monarchical State all lands have been "originally granted by the Sovereign," is to state a fiction of Feudal Law as a historical fact, and thereby to obscure the true facts of English history. But perhaps Mr. Baker would urge that the Teutonic invasion of Britain, and the consequent allotment of lands among the successful invading hosts, are both beyond the memory of man and need not be taken into account. As a matter of Nineteenth Century Law, a knowledge of which is very desirable in the present day, we are glad to see that Mr. Baker includes "Suggested Forms" for the Regulation of Bicycles, under 41 & 42 Vict., c. 77, s. 26.

Introduction to Roman Law. By WILLIAM A. HUNTER, M.A., of the Middle Temple, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, Professor of Jurisprudence, University College, London. W. Maxwell and

Son. 1880.

There is a growing fashion in favour of small books on great subjects. In some respects this is a good fashion, when the small books are, as in the present case, written by persons thoroughly conversant with their subject. At the same time we fear that many will content themselves with the primers, manuals, and introductions of the various series of such works which are so much in vogue, and will never proceed any further in their studies. Professor Hunter has yielded to the demands of the day, and has produced an Introduction to Roman Law, which he no doubt intends to lead up to the fuller and more scientific treatment of the subject in the spirit in which he has himself. treated it in his very elaborate and valuable Roman Law in the Order of a Code, already noticed in these pages. We fear that in the case of Professor Hunter's Introduction, as in the case of many other such manuals, the student who profits by the learned Professor's generally clear and acute method of exposition, will not go on as he should, to the deeper research which Roman Law so imperatively demands. But it will be well for the student if he reads carefully such a book as the one now before us. Professor Hunter's Introduction seems to us to be at once more interesting as a narrative, and better calculated to arouse the desire for further study than most books of the kind. There are some points where we should say that a too epigrammatic mode of stating his case has led the learned author into a

dubious position. His description of the Prætors (p. 7), as "the men who administered justice," but "did not know the law," is sure to be misunderstood by the nineteenth century student, who will probably be much surprised, as he proceeds, to find how largely Prætorian legislation enters into, and how profoundly it modified, Roman Law-a fact which Professor Hunter himself brings out in full relief. Without the Prætor, and without his philosophical breadth of view, admitting aliens to possession, and to remedies by Interdict which else would have been unattainable to them, what would the Roman Law have been? So far as we can see, and so far, it seems to us, as Professor Hunter can see, it would have been but a stereotyped Formalism, instead of being what the Prætors, and the Stoics, and the genius of the Roman people made it-a treasure-house of Juridical Science for all time. There are occasionally some words brought into use by Professor Hunter, which we cannot say that we hope to see taking permanent root among us. We have no liking for such an epithet as "clamant (p. 71). "Crying evils we were and are well acquainted with, and we are not sure that we should not be disposed to class among them the unnecessary coining of words in the treatises of scientific Jurists.

The Law and Practice of Joint Stock and other Companies. By Sir HENRY THRING, K.C.B., of the Inner Temple, the Parliamentary Counsel. Fourth Edition. Edited by G. A. R. FITZGERALD, M.A., of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-Law, Esq., late Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. Stevens and Sons. 1880.

Among treatises on Company Law, Sir Henry Thring's work has long been admitted to be facile princeps. Five years have elapsed since the last edition was published, and during this period, in addition to the many important legal decisions which have been pronounced on the subject, the statute law has been augmented by the provisions of the 10th sec. of the Judicature Act, 1875; the Companies Acts, 1877, 1879, and 1880, and the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, 1876. In preparing the present edition Mr. Fitzgerald has been careful to incorporate both the new statute and the new case law, and has generally revised the text so as to render it quite up to date. The very useful appendix of "Forms relating to Companies," has also received important additions.

The Institutes of Law, a Treatise of the Principles of Jurisprudence as Determined by Nature. By JAMES Lorimer, M.A., Advocate, Regius Professor of Public Law and of the Law of Nature and Nations in the University of Edinburgh, Member of the Institute of International Law, &c. Second edition, revised and

enlarged. London.

William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and

1880.

The last time that Professor Lorimer came before our notice in these pages he appeared purely as a practical lawyer, providing his countrymen and all others whom it might concern with a Handbook of the Law of Scotland. He now returns to what is probably the more congenial sphere of a scientific, not to say a speculative, jurist. In its present revised and enlarged form, as indeed from the first, Professor Lorimer's book on the Institutes of Law must occupy a position different from that of most recent works dealing with the same subject. For it is, to say the least, much more of an encyclopædia of the various sciences whose borders are touched at some point by Jurisprudence, than almost any work of the kind not written by a German Professor. It would, in fact, be difficult to name a point in Theology or Morals, or even in the modern Science of Comparative Religion (to adopt a convenient nomenclature), upon which Professor Lorimer has not something to say, whether by way of rebuke or approval, somewhere in the course of his present work. It would be hopeless to attempt detailed criticism of such a Treatise in the limited space at our disposal. We can only endeavour to call attention to a few of the many points in the learned author's statement of his views which seem to require special notice. We observe, and we observe with regret, that one who occupies so influential a position as the Regius Chair of Public Law in the University of Edinburgh appears to be a determined adversary of John Stuart Mill, of Jeremy Bentham, and of John Austin. It is, no doubt, some satisfaction to find that Professor Lorimer upholds Plato and Socrates, Grotius and Savigny. But we must confess, for our own part, heterodox though the confession may be in the eyes of the learned author of the Institutes of Law, that we feel quite able to keep a place in our own regard for every one of these great luminaries of Political and Juridical Science. We are far from setting up any one of them against the other. We think that they, each and all, in their day, brought out into strong relief some essential portion of that Divine Truth which

Professor Lorimer evidently believes, with much reverence, to form as it were the "Depositum Fidei" of Jurisprudence.

It is quite possible to give up the cumbrousness of any particular phraseology which Bentham introduced, and yet to do homage to him as the motive power to which we must refer nearly every substantive legal reform by which we have benefited since he passed away from among us. It is quite possible to admit that Austin's language might have been clearer, and that if he had lived to our day he would probably have materially altered some of his views, and yet to regard him as one who, for our country and for our age, laboured more abundantly than most men, and with life-long devotion, to lay deep the foundations of a Science of Jurisprudence. That we have such a science at all, in this country, is recognised by many of our highest living jurists to be chiefly due to the unwearied, unselfish, unrewarded zeal of John Austin.

To others, our more remote fathers in the Science of Law and in the postulating of a Law of Nature,-to the Stoic Philosophers, and the Jurists of the Stoic School, and the Christian inheritors of the traditions of the Porch,-Professor Lorimer is much more just in his estimate of their value. It would be difficult, indeed, not to warm towards the school of Cicero, of Seneca, of Boëthius, of Ulpian, and, in fact, of the Philosophical side of Roman Law from the moment it fell under the influence of Greek Philosophy-towards that school which taught so emphatically that slavery is "contra naturam," that by nature all men are brothers, fellow-citizens of that World-State, in which all the States of the Earth are but houses and streets,—and which so earnestly asserted that there was no distinction between Greek and Barbarian, between bond and free, except Virtue.

For the broad outline of the tone of thought which Professor Lorimer follows in his present book, we were prepared by previous acquaintance with his very elaborate articles in the Revue de Droit International, for 1877 and 1878. With much of that thought we cannot ourselves agree. But it is worth the study which it will require, for an honour man at Oxford or Cambridge, as well as at the Inns of Court, to follow Professor Lorimer in his numerous excursuses on such deep questions as Predestination, Autonomy, Nirvana, the Philosophical, and the Ecclesiastical Jurists, and the many other suggestive subjects which he discusses. No mere pass student

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