of oaths, but in Guernsey this right is particularly denied. to them.

Trial by jury in criminal cases was established in Jersey in 1786, but does not exist in Guernsey. In this and many other respects the practice of the law differs essentially and widely. "It is, indeed, not easy for two different nations to be more distinct from each other in many of their laws than Jersey and Guernsey."1 The two islands keep quite apart, and desire to maintain their independence as strongly as they uphold their right of self-government in opposition to claims put forward by the Crown. In asserting the power of the Royal Court in Guernsey, it is contended that the Lieutenant-Governor is subject to it by his oath, in which he promises

"If peradventure you should act or do anything contrary to the said privileges, ancient customs and ordinances, that you will at all times upon conference with the Bailiff and Jurats and their pointing it out to you, redress the same in everything that shall be meet and reasonable."

In addition to his judicial work as a member of the Royal Court, the Jurat also has a seat in the States as a legislative assembly. There is evidence for the belief that the States were originally an outcome of the Royal Court. Thus he assists in making as well as interpreting the laws. Furthermore, the Guernsey Royal Court has retained its own. legislative authority, apart from the States, of which the Jersey Court was deprived in 1771.

Even those who have the most intimate knowledge of the customs of the island have difficulty in defining the boundary between the subjects legislated upon by the Royal Court and the States. It is suggested that the former never actually legislates, but makes administrative orders, whose effect cannot easily be distinguished from the result of statutory enactment. This legislative power of the Royal Court has one advantage, that it enables urgent matters to 1 The Channel Islands, by Dr. Ansted and R. G. Latham, revised by E. T. Nicolle, p. 432.

receive immediate attention. The Court requests the Law Officers to prepare a bill, takes it into consideration at the next sitting, approves the measure, and thereupon it becomes the law of the island. On the other hand, this power is a source of conflict with the States, as, if the ordonnance is intended to be lasting, it must be laid before the States for their approval. But without that sanction or the assent of the Lieutenant-Governor it may have the full force of law.

This dual capacity renders the position of the Jurat unsatisfactory, and the constitution of the Courts has been declared to be "anomalous and incompatible with its competency to decide questions of law." The scarcity

of lawsuits and the fact that disputes are often compromised may be ascribed chiefly to this cause. Nevertheless there seems to be no immediate prospect of effecting the obvious reform of employing a paid judiciary of trained lawyers. The recommendation was one among many made by the Royal Commission in 1860. One reason for satisfaction with the existing state of affairs probably lies in the nature of the laws which have to be administered by the Jurats.

In Jersey certain of the laws were codified in 1771; but the work is an unsatisfactory compilation, of which the greater part has fallen into desuetude.o There is a collection of Orders made by the Sovereign in Council affecting the island, and the "lois et réglements" of the States have been collected in an edition recently completed. Guernsey has no code, but there are collected editions of the ordonances of the Royal Court, and also of the Orders in Council applying to the island. The laws governing the island of Guernsey are mostly taken from Le Contumier de Normandie, Commentaires de Terrien sur le

1 Jersey Laws Commission, ubi sup., p. xxxiv.

2 A second edition was issued in 1860.

3 As there is some difficulty in obtaining these laws in England, it may be mentioned that the States printer is Mr. J. T. Bigwood, 13, Broad Street, Jersey, and in Guernsey application should be made to II. M.'s Greffier.

166 JURAT IN THE ROYAL COURTS OF JERSEY AND GUERNSEY.

Droit Civil, Commentaires de Basnage, Pothier and other
Norman commentators. There adoption has been sanc-
tioned by an Order intituled "Approbation des Lois."
Since 1885 the decisions of the Jersey Royal Court have
been published in digests from time to time; but in
Guernsey the rulings of the Court are only available in
MS., but readily accessible in the excellent muniment
rooms of the Court, which are open freely to the public.
The influence of English commercial law and procedure
is felt in Jersey, but the procedure of the Court and the
land laws are based on the Norman coutumier, and the
whole atmosphere of the proceedings is of a Court un-
affected by modern changes in practice.

Sometimes the Jurat has served the office of constable,
in which he has a certain amount of municipal and ad-
ministrative work, so that he has had an apprenticeship
for the higher office, so far as his legislative and adminis-
trative duties in the States are concerned. A change,
however, in the calibre of the Jurat would involve a com-
plete overhaul of the administration of justice. It can
readily be understood, therefore, that the islanders hesitate
to upset arrangements which have served them well and
developed according to their needs during hundreds of years.
C. E. A. BEDWELL.

167

V.-RESPONSIBILITY IN LAW.1

(Continued from Vol. XXXII, page 457.)

IT

IX.

T will not seriously be questioned at the present day that man has a spiritual as well as a material originthat he is constituted of a higher and a lower self. The higher self will correspond with his spiritual origin, the lower self with his animal origin: and the character of the man will depend on the nature of the control: when the spiritual and the material faculties work together in unison, the man is sane; when these respective faculties work no longer together in unison, when there is a divided personality in which the normal action of the spiritual upon the material is arrested or perverted, the man is no longer sane. The material part of man is endowed with life—has a soul in like manner as the lower animal creation; and, so far as we have any right to anticipate, this soul in conscious existence is intimately related to the life of the body-coming in with the first breath of life and going out with the last the spiritual part of man is self-existentan emanation from the Divine of a new self at conception; and, as we have every reason to believe, this spirit in subconscious existence is fitted to control soul and body during life and is freed at the moment of dissolution and survives. 3

1 Sections I to VI of this article appeared in Vol. XXXI (1906); Sections VII and VIII in Vol. XXXII (1907). Section IX (conclusion) should have appeared in Vol. XXXIII (1908) but was unavoidably held over. The treatise with some alterations and additions has now been published in book form by Messrs. Butterworth & Co., Bell Yard, Temple Bar.-Ed. Law Magazine & Review.

2 Lodge, The Substance of Faith, 77; Myers, Human Personality, Vol. I, 14, 15; Josiah Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 340, 372-80.

8 St. Matthew, xxvi, 38; St. Luke, xxiii, 46; Psalms, cxvi, 8; lvi, 13; xxxi, 5; Acts of the Apostles, vii, 59; Hudson, The Law of Mental Medicine, 23, 25-8; 83-92.

1

In these spiritual and material faculties we are able to trace the several origins of the intuitional and the empirical, the rational and the experiential, qualities of man; we can discover the correspondence of the intuitional in man to the instinctive in the lower animals; and we can see how man, when bereft of his higher faculties, may be so "totally deprived of his understanding (as not to) know what he is doing no more than . . a brute or a wild beast." The spirit is the true self; the soul and body are the manifestation (incarnation) of the spirit; but the spirit may be deposed from its seat, and soul and body be possessed by alien influences-thus arises the phenomenon of a divided. personality which may occur spontaneously under certain psychopathic conditions, or be artificially produced in cases of hypnotisation.

The normal mind being thus constituted of supraliminal and subliminal faculties functioning upon a primary basis of intellect, feelings and will, the impairment or dispossession of either of these two faculties must inevitably react upon the three basal functions; and we would expect accordingly that states of abnormality should show themselves. indifferently-in the intellect by way of defect of reason, in the feelings through perversion of moral sense, and in the will from misdirected action. These various deflections from the normal will manifest themselves under various phases and in varying degrees; but, in all cases, we shall have to look for some sign of that impairment of the material or dispossession of the spiritual, which may arrest the harmonious action of the higher and lower faculties of the mind, before we shall arrive at a true criterion of responsibility. We may classify insane states for convenience sake under three main headings, and in each

1 Arnold's Case, Mr. Justice Tracey, in his charge to the jury, took this view of such a madness "as is to be exempted from punishment," 16 State Trials (Howell), 765, 695-766.

2 Myers, Human Personality, Vol. I, 203-5, 173, 62, 217, 65; Vol. II, 192-8.