by its becoming commercially impossible on account of the war. His lordship took the view that the rule in Taylor v. Caldwell still applies only where a specific thing, the foundation of the contract, has ceased to exist. The disturbance of the "return coal trade" from Scotland, on whose continuance the defendants relied when making their contract to carry cement to Rosyth, did not relieve them from it. The case puts a useful check on the dangerous uncertainty which the Coronation Cases created. Nor, it was held, did the interference with traffic amount to a "restraint of princes," or to a Government interference under the Defence of the Realm Act (Second Amending Act) 1915, s. 1 (2). Ridley, J., gave a somewhat different decision in Berthond v. Schweder & Co.1

American Notes.

We are in receipt of various interesting pamphlets and papers from America touching upon questions arising out of the war. It is gratifying, though not unexpected, to find them for the most part thoroughly sympathetic to the Allies' cause. In particular, our attention has been attracted by three able pamphlets by Professor C. Noble Gregory. One is a reprint from the Harvard Law Review, and concerns the operation of the Statutes of Limitation in war time. As long ago as 1661 it was held that the interruption of public justice within the realm was no bar to the Statute-for it was not within its exceptions. And this was affirmed in general terms by Grant, M.R., in Beckford v. Wade. The United States adopt a different rule. The remedy on the suspended right revives on the conclusion of peace in as good a state of preservation as it was before. It may be that the English 1 29th April, 1915.

2 Prideaux v. Webber, 1 Lev. 31.

3 17 Ves., fo. 87.

Courts would now follow the United States rule; but the Stuart cases seem to be too strong to be evaded. The American plea that at the date of the Statute of Limitations, it was of no use preserving the remedy, since the right was certain to be confiscated, surely cannot alter its interpretation even were it historically true. A Statute is not elastic. Professor Gregory seems to adopt the idea that sect. 23 (h) of the Hague Convention for the Conduct of War on Land prevents a State from excluding hostile aliens from suit in its own Courts, as well as in invaded territory. From the Columbia Law Review, Professor Gregory extracts a useful discussion of the burning topic of Contributions and Requisitions, which have been so excessively levied in Belgium. His masterly sketch of the history of the subject errs in only one particular: Calvo's work was not published in 1896-at any rate, for the first time. Professor Gregory is undoubtedly right in deprecating post-bellum attempts by one antagonist to sit in criminal judgment on the unlawful deeds of the soldiers of the other.

A short article may also be mentioned, written by the same Author, in the New York Herald on Neutrality and Arms Shipments, in which he amply vindicates the legality of the practice of not interfering with the export of munitions by individuals. We may add to his arguments that the practice furnishes neutrals with a powerful weapon to employ if they should need to make their rights respected. It is easy for them to threaten to prohibit such export: it would not be easy for them to threaten to allow it.

TH. B.

488

VII. NOTES ON RECENT CASES (ENGLISH).

THE

'HE cases reported from the House of Lords and the Privy Council this last quarter are singularly devoid of interest to the English lawyer. One of them, however, is, in its way, peculiar and amusing.

In Attorney-General of Southern Nigeria v. John Holt & Co. (Liverpool), Ltd. (L. R. [1915], A. C. 599), a question arose as to the respective rights of the Crown and of the defendants in land reclaimed by works on the foreshore intended to prevent erosion by the sea. The effect of these works was to cause an artificial deposit along the foreshore, which, in time, consolidated into firm land. On this happening, the defendants treated the land as an accretion to their property which abutted on the foreshore. They built warehouses on it and piers for their ships from it. The Privy Council held that the new reclaimed land, having been created not by natural but by artificial means, belonged to the Crown; but it held further that, since the Crown had acquiesced in the use of the land by the defendants for warehouses and piers, it could not now object to these. In other words, it held that a very new kind of easement had, through the conduct of the Crown, been created-an easement which practically gave a person other than the owner the exclusive use of the land. This, in the headnote to the case, is called a licence, but in the judgment it is called an easement, and the dictum of Lord St. Leonards, in Dyce v. Hay (1 Macq. 305), is quoted by Lord Shaw of Dunfermline to justify it: "The category of servitudes and easements must alter and expand with the changes that take place in the circumstances of mankind." course, if it is to run with the land, it must be as an easement; a licence is merely personal (see Taylor v. Waters, 7 Taunt. 373).

Of

The amusing point about the case is this. Osborne, C.J., held, on hearing the case as judge of first instance, that the Crown had by conduct granted an irrevocable and perpetual licence to the defendants to use the reclaimed land in the ways indicated. When the Crown appealed, the appeal came again before him and his learned colleagues. He then declared that on reconsideration his previous judgment was erroneous and allowed the Crown's Appeal. Now the Privy Council has restored his first judgment, and declared that it is really his second one that is erroneous.

We have before this commented on the fact that a testator who leaves legacies for the benefit of charities is as likely as not to find-if in the next world he is vouchsafed a knowledge of how things are going on in this one -that, in fact, he has left them for the benefit of lawyers. Thus, in In re Davies, Lloyd v. Cardigan County Council (L. R. [1915], I Ch. 543), an ex-policeman left £50 to the vicar of C., on condition that he and his successors kept the testator's grave in repair, with a gift over on failure to observe this condition to "the superannuation fund of the Cardiganshire Constabulary." There was no

superannuation fund," only a "pension fund," connected with the Cardiganshire Constabulary, and on technical grounds it was not a charity. Held, that the gift over failed. By the time the costs of the summons to decide this abstruse point are paid, it will matter little, one may surmise, what the decision was.

Another testator, with a diabolical design to deprive lawyers of their legitimate share of all funds left for charitable purposes, made the scandalous proposal in his will that if any dispute arose as to the charities which he intended to benefit, this dispute should be decided by his trustees (In re Raven, Spencer v. The National Association

for the Prevention of Consumption and other forms of Tuberculosis and Reginald Pratt (L. R. [1915], I Ch. 673)). This infamous project was happily foiled. One of his legacies was to "The National Association for the Prevention of Consumption." There was no charity answering this description precisely, but there was one society partially answering it with which the testator had nothing to do and an independent branch of the same society in which he was deeply interested. The Court held (firstly and properly) that who the real legatee was must be decided by the Court, and (secondly, and perhaps improperly) that, as the legatee was described as "the Association," and not as a "Branch of the Association," the branch had no claim, and that no extrinsic evidence was admissible to prove what no sane person can doubt was the testator's intention, namely, that the society which he meant to benefit at his death was the one in which he was interested in during his life.

Finally, in In re Dawson, Pattison v. Bathurst (L. R. [1915], I Ch. 626), a testator who died in 1891 left the residue of his personal estate, after a life interest, for charitable purposes. His personal estate included debentures charged upon the property of an Australian company. This company's property in England consisted of a leasehold office-of no pecuniary value-and office furniture. And the Court held that, in consequence of this, the gift to the charities failed. so far as the debentures were concerned, since they were money charged on land. It is comforting to think that, owing to the Mortmain and Charitable Uses Act 1891, the Court will not often in the future have to give such decisions as this.

The decision in the case of In re Groos, Groos v. Groos (L. R. [1915], I Ch. 572) seems directly in the teeth of an Act of Parliament. Lord Kingsdown's Act, sect. 3,