appeal; and we now learn from Professor Takahashi's book, that the case was not treated in Japan as one of contraband at all, but as one of belligerent hiring.

T. B.

VII.-NOTES ON RECENT CASES (ENGLISH).

IN

N Conway v. Wade (L. R. [1908], 2 K. B. 844) the Court of Appeal have said more disparaging things of the Trades Disputes Act than have been uttered by the official voice since Sir J. Lawson Walton's celebrated speech as Attorney-General, when he appealed to the House not to create a privileged class nor remove a sense of responsibility from unions and agents. But apparently neither the then Attorney-General nor the Lord Chancellor, judging by his Lordship's speech of 4th December, 1906, had any impression that "an outsider, a mere busybody," would come within the protection of the Act, provided his interference was in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute. Yet the words of the section might well have suggested the interpretation to this effect which the Court of Appeal have put upon them. And, indeed, such a meaning was conjectured a considerable time ago. A remark of Kennedy, L.J., in the case, seems to imply a non-assent to a view expressed by Romer, L.J., in Giblan v. National Amalgamated Labourers (L. R. [1903], 2 K. B. 600), of the state of the law at the date of that case. Probably the passage referred to is one to the effect that it was not, in Lord Justice Romer's opinion, essential to the success of a plaintiff-workman, who had been displaced from his employment by the act of a trade union, that he should establish a combination of two or more persons to do the acts complained of; but that if a person, by threats to a man's employers, prevents the man from holding his employment, and the design was to carry out some spite against the man or had for its object the

compelling him to pay a debt, then the person is liable to the man for damages consequently suffered. Not improbably this view of Romer, L.J., had an influence which led to the proposal of the clause so strongly opposed by the then Attorney-General, but subsequently adopted by the Government.

As the holder of licensed premises has an accelerated advance to fortune, he must be prepared to surrender something in exchange. For instance, his house is not his castle, and if there is a sound of revelry by night therein, the police may demand entrance. The privilege of entertaining his private friends after closing hours at his own expense was recognised by sect. 30 of the Licensing Act 1874, but if his hospitality is so lavish that any of them are overcome by it, he is liable to conviction, as in Lawson v. Edminson (L. R. [1908], 2 K. B. 952). So also is he under sect. 17 of the previous Act of 1872, if they play cards for money, for, as Grove, J., said in Hare v. Osborne (34 L. T. R. [1876], 294), the exemption under sect. 30 of the Act of 1874 does not extend to gambling. By the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1903 there is a condition that the license holder "do not himself be in a state of intoxication on the premises."

The argument that because a man has attached fittings and shafting to the soil of a business building of which he makes no present use, he is therefore not in occupation, so as to be liable for rates, has not carried weight with the Court in Borwick v. Southwark Corporation (L. R. [1909], 1 K. B. 78). It was admitted that if the same fittings had been merely stored in the building, the owner would have been liable to be assessed. And it was admitted that the premises had never been offered for letting, but were kept to enable the owner, without delay, to carry on his business

therein in the event of other premises in which it was pursued being rendered untenable. This certainly implies Occupation.

Overseers, in preparing a valuation list, probably but seldom under-assess a ratepayer's liability; but a ratepayer may often believe that his assessment is too high, and in such a case his remedy is to apply to the Assessment Committee to amend the list. The plaintiff in Hudson v. Rhodes (L. R. [1909], 1 K. B. 85) did so, and the Assessment Committee, instead of dealing with his application and no more, raised his assessment. But herein they were wrong. The limit of their jurisdiction was either to refuse his application, or to assent to it and amend the list to such a figure below the amount entered in it against his name as they thought fit. In no other respect can they vary the list on an appeal to them by a ratepayer against an assessment on his own premises. But there is one possible case in which the course they wrongly adopted here may be pursued rightly-viz., where an application is made by a ratepayer to raise the assessment of another ratepayer. But on this point the Court refused to express an opinion.

In Chapman v. Smethurst (L. R. [1909], 1 K. B. 73) Channell, J., said it was difficult to form a confident opinion. But, at any rate, he enforced a good practical rule for persons who as agents sign mercantile instruments and wish to preserve their freedom from personal liability. On a promissory note expressed "I promise to pay" a certain sum to a certain person, the defendant had impressed, by means of a rubber stamp, the name of a company for whose use the money was applied, and added his signature as managing director of the company. Channell, J., in holding that the defendant was liable as principal, pointed out that in cases where the signatory of

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on behalf

such instruments had been held harmless, his position had been defined by some such expression as "for," of," the body whom he professed to represent. As the intention of parties to the document must be ascertained solely from the document itself, the greatest care must be exercised in regard to the terms adopted.

T. J. B.

It is rather remarkable that there should be so many as four decisions reported in the Law Reports for November and December on the single, and not always useful, doctrine of conversion. In In re Dodson, Yates v. Morton (L. R. [1908], 2 Ch. 638), Eve, J., held that an order for the sale of land made in a partition action converts the property from the time the order is made. Accordingly, if one of the parties die before the sale takes place, his share will devolve as personalty. This seems inconsistent with the language of Jessel, M.R., in Steed v. Preece, L. R. [1874], 18 Eq. 192, where that great judge held that after an order for sale the deceased owner's representatives must take the property as they find it. But Sir George Jessel was often very careless in his language; and in another case, when the precise point arose, he clearly held that the order converts the property from the time it was made (Wallace v. Greenwood, L. R., 16 Ch. D. 362).

The second is Burgess v. Booth (L. R. [1908], 2 Ch. 648), which also relates to a point raised in Steed v. Preece (supra), and the effect of an order to sell realty. Though it is not clear that the remark was more than obiter dictum, Jessel, M.R., in that case said that where land is rightfully sold under an order of the Court it is converted, even though more is sold than is necessary for the purpose for which the sale was ordered. An Irish case (Scott v. Scott, 9 L. R., Ir. 367), is to a different effect, and it seems only reasonable

that the Court should not, during the infancy of an owner, alter arbitrarily by its order the prospective rights of his relatives. But the principle laid down in Steed v. Preece has been consistently adopted in English Courts, and so when Eve, J., now followed Scott v. Scott (supra), the Court of Appeal reversed his decision.

The decision of Eve, J., on the point of law was also reversed in the third case-In re Lord Grimthorpe, Beckett v. Lord Grimthorpe (L. R. [1908], 2 Ch. 675). In this case his lordship seems to have been misled by the old view that a deed operates to convert from the moment of its execution. There the deceased had on his marriage disentailed freeholds and conveyed the same to trustees upon trust during the life-time of his parents and the survivor of them, to receive certain annual payments, &c., after the death of the survivor, to the use of himself for life and then to trustees for sale and investment, and then to pay an annuity to his wife and portions to his children. The settlor's wife predeceased him and there were no children of the marriage. Eve, J., held that the property was converted by the trust for sale, since, at the time the settlement was executed, the objects for which the trust for sale was created had not failed. The Court of Appeal held that the time to inquire whether the objects of the trust had failed was when the trust for sale If there was no one then entitled to enforce the sale there was no conversion.

arose.

Lastly, in In re Walker, Macintosh-Walker v. Walker (L. R. [1908], 2 Ch. 705), Parker, J., held that a mere direction that personalty should devolve like realty is not sufficient to convert personalty into realty in equity. Only the legislature can attach to personalty the legal attributes of realty, and vice versa. For instance, it has done this with capital moneys arising under the Settled Land Acts, and with