in which the court has refused to use any such affidavit simply because the letter of the rule has not been strictly followed. Whether, therefore, under these circumstances, and so long as the rule in question is not rigidly enforced, either by the court or in its offices, compliance with its letter, on the part of the commissioner taking any such affidavit, should be considered as optional with him or not, may, from an official point of view, be accepted, for the present at least, as an open question; but we can hardly advise commissioners to disregard the express provisions of the rule. Either the rule should be altered or the commissioners may, as suggested by our correspondent " J. H.," reasonably seek some special authorized remuneration in respect of the duty imposed.

A LINK between the past and the present in legal history was severed by the death last week, at the age of ninety-five years, of Mr. Richard Mills, whose connection with the Court of Chancery extended from the Chancellorship of Lord Eldon to that of Lord Hatherley. Born in 1785, Mr. Mills appeared to have become connected with the Six Clerks' Office about the year 1814, and was for several years one of the sworn clerks of the court. By 5 & 6 Vict. c. 103, s. 1 (which came into operation on the 28th of October, 1842), the offices of Six Clerks, Sworn Clerks, and other offices in chancery were abolished, with a reservation of the right to recover fees for business already done. By section 4 Mr. Mills was appointed one of the first taxing masters of the court, another section having created that office and fixed the salary at £2,000 per annum. Section 10 prohibited the

IT IS UNDERSTOOD that between twenty and thirty newly-appointed taxing masters from receiving any fees,

election petitions have been placed on the file, and look-
ing to the fact that each of them, if brought to trial,
must, in accordance with the Parliamentary Elections
and Corrupt Practices Act, 1879 (42 & 43 Vict. c. 75),
be tried by two judges, and that by the present arrange-
ments under the Parliamentary Elections Act, 1868 (31
& 32 Vict. c. 125), only three judges are detached to try
them, it becomes a serious arithmetical question to con-
sider how the work is to be got through. The rules
which were issued under the Act of 1868 provide very
fully for the transaction of a moderate amount of busi.
ness by three judges working singly and contempo-
raneously. Thus, by rule 31," the time and place of the
trial of each election petition shall be fixed by the judges
on the rota," and notice is to be given to all proper
parties "fifteen days before the day appointed for the
trial." By rule 34, " a judge may from time to time,
by order made upon the application of a party to the peti-
tion,
postpone the beginning of the trial to
such day as he may name," and by rule 35 (which, we
should imagine will soon be found to be of much use),
"in the event of a judge not having arrived at the time
appointed for the trial, or to which the trial is postponed,
the commencement of the trial shall ipso facto stand
adjourned to the ensuing day, and so from day to day."
By proceeding leisurely on the lines of these and the
other rules, there seems to be little doubt that the whole
set of petitions (assuming them all to come to trial)
might be got through, allowing five days for each peti-
tion, and leaving the single judge to deal with all
interlocutory applications-which by the Act of 1879 a
single judge is permitted to do-in about twenty-five
weeks. This is, however, scarcely as expeditious work as
appears to have been intended, and the hearing of
interlocutory applications by a single judge not himself
one of the triers of the petition might work inconveni-
ence. What then must be done? The remedy is to
be found in the 7th sub-section of the 11th section of
the Act of 1868, which is as follows: "Where it appears
to the judges on the rota, after due consideration of the
list of petitions under this Act for the time being at
issue, that the trial of such election petitions will be in-
conveniently delayed unless an additional judge or
judges be appointed to assist the judges on the rota, cach
of the said courts (that is to say) the Court of Exchequer,
the Court of Common Pleas, aud Court of Queen's Bench
in the order named, shall, on and according to the re-
quisition of such judges on the rota, select one of the puisne
judges of the court to try election petitions for the en-
suing year; and any judge so selected shall, during that
year, be deemed to be on the rota for the trial of election
petitions." To put this sub-section in force would no
doubt greatly tax our present judicial strength, but it
seems to be a course almost imperatively required. It
will be observed that the sub-section may be put in force
mero motu by the requisitioning judges, but that there
s no external machinery for bringing it into operation.

but section 12 enabled the holders of the offices which were abolished to make a claim for compensation, the amount of which was to be determined by the Lord Chancellor upon an estimate of three years' average amount of fees and emoluments of the office, and was to be not less than three-fourths nor more than the whole of this amount. It was also provided that, in the case of a Sworn Clerk appointed to any public office, such portion of the compensa.

tion as the Lord Chancellor should direct should cease to be payable, provided that the reduction should not make the annual income from salary and compensation combined less than the full net annual value of the fees, &c., in respect of which the compensation was awarded. From the Civil Service Estimates for the present year it appears that Mr. Mills' salary at the time of the passing of the Act of 1842 was estimated at £6,580 12s. 9d., which amount he received till his resignation in 1871 of the office of taxing master. His retiring pension is stated at £4,935 9s. 7d., and this pension is not yet at an end, since section 14 of the same Act enacts that ("inasmuch as the business of a Sworn Clerk has been treated as a

subject of sale and succession, and has been commonly sold for half the profits during the seven years next after a sale") half of the annual amount awarded to any sworn clerk shall be paid for seven years after his death to his executors, administrators, or assigns as part of his personal estate.

At the last Birmingham Sessions the recorder, Mr. Dugdale, sentenced a youth named Kavanagh to four years detention in a reformatory. Major Preston, the governor of the gaol, has since written to the recorder declaring his inability to find a reformatory willing to receive the youth unless the weekly maintenance fee is guaranteed by the local authority under the Prisons Act. The corporation hold that they are not liable for such contributions, and as the Government refuse to pay the money or increase their present reformatory grant of 63. per head per week the sentence cannot be carried out.

At the Kirkdale Quarter Sessions on the 27th ult., Lord Derby drew attention to the subjects of which he had given notice-viz., the holding of more frequent sessions and the appointment of a stipendiary chairman. His lordship argued that it was unfair for prisoners to be detained in gaɔl waiting their trial for a longer period than was absolutely necessary, and further than that, with the growth of the population the work of the court was continually increasing, and they Then there might expect that it would increase still more. was a general feeling that the assize judges had to deal with a great many small and unimportant cases, which might just as well be disposed of at the sessions, and they might expect. that before long cases of this kind would be sent to the sessions. With regard to the appointment of a paid chairman, he found that this could not be done without the authority of an Act of Parliament. This would necessitate some delay, which would not be without advantage, as considerable difference of opinion on the point existed among the magistrates at present. In the meantime, he (his lordship) was quite willing to suit the convenience of the magistrates, and if it was their wish he would postpone his retirement until some more suitable time.

THE LIABILITY OF AN UNNAMED

PRINCIPAL.

THE case of Irvine v. Watson (28 W. R. 353), recently decided by Bowen, J., on further consideration, establishes an important distinction between cases where an agent in contracting for the purchase of goods on account of his principal makes no mention of his principal at all, and cases where he mentions the existence of a principal but does not mention his name. It was held that whereas in the former class of cases the seller, upon discovery of the principal, cannot have recourse to him if, in the meanwhile, the principal has bond fide settled with the agent for the price of the goods, in the latter class of cases the seller may be entitled to have recourse to the principal though he has bona fide paid the agent,

unless there has been such conduct on the seller's

part-e.g., delay in applying to the principal-as might justify the principal in concluding that the seller was not looking to his credit but that of the agent.

follow that if the agent cannot pay for the goods, and therefore, the seller will not deliver them, the principal could not enforce delivery on tendering the price. If the seller is to have no rights upon the contract against the principal, would it not follow that the principal can have no rights against him? It would appear that the true view must be that the sale is really one to the undisclosed principal, and that the ordinary relation of seller and purchaser arises between the seller and the principal when the latter is discovered or discovers himself, subject to the proviso stated in Thompson v. Davenport. That proviso appears to be in the nature of an equity arising by way of exception to the general rule that the seller is entitled to treat the principal as the purchaser of the goods on discovering him, The true basis of this equity seems at first sight somewhat doubtful. The question may be asked why, inasmuch as the principal knew that the agent was contracting on his behalf with

another, that other should not have as against him all

the rights that arise under a contract of sale made without the intervention of an agent? It appears to us that the doctrine must rest on some such considera

of business, that the principal should in all cases be obliged to seek out and pay the seller whether the seller demanded payment of him or not. The purchaser may not know who the seller is, or may know little or nothing of him, and the more natural and convenient course of business would probably in many cases be for payment to be made to the agent as the party whom the purchaser knew in the transaction. The seller, who

was content in the first instance to contract with the

agent as a principal, and who gave credit to him and not the principal, cannot say that it is any hardship upon him to look to the agent for payment if the purchaser has already paid the agent.

Though the law on the subject is at present well settled, originally there was some doubt as to the positions as these. It would be inconvenient, as a matter tion of the principal when the agent, in making the contract, had not mentioned his existence. The leading authority on the subject is Thompson v. Davenport (9 B. & C. 78). In that case it was held that the seller could only have recourse to the principal, on discovering his existence, if he had not meanwhile paid the agent, or the state of the accounts between the principal and agent did not render it inequitable that the seller should any longer look to the principal for payment. The statement of the proviso which relieves the undisclosed principal in certain cases from all necessity to pay the seller, was thought by Parke, B., and the other judges, in the subsequent case of Heald v. Kenworthy (10 Ex. 745), to be too large without further explanation, and they expressed the view that the only case in which the seller, under such circumstances, was precluded from having recourse to the undisclosed principal, when discovered, was when the seller, by some conduct of his own, had misled the principal into paying or settling with his agent in the interim. But in the case of Armstrong v. Stokes (L. R. 7 Q. B. 599), the Queen's Bench did not adopt this narrower view, and they revert to the wider language used by Lord Tenterden in Thompson v. Davenport. It is now, therefore, the law that a seller who has given credit to an agent believing him to be a principal cannot have recourse to the undisclosed principal if the principal has borâ fide paid the agent at a time when the seller still gave credit to the agent and knew of no one else except him as principal.

Doubts have been expressed whether, under any circumstances, the seller ought to be allowed to have recourse to a person to whom he never gave credit and whom he did not know in the transaction at the time when the contract was made. But, on the whole, it would seem that if there has been no settlement between the agent and the principal, and no other circumstances exist rendering it inequitable that the seller should have recourse to the principal, it is just that he should be allowed to have such recourse. The seller has not been paid for his goods, the agent had authority to pledge the principal's credit, and the prineipal has had the benefit of the goods. Why should not the party who has had the benefit of the goods, not having paid for them, pay their price to him who has parted with his goods in consideration of being paid such price? If the seller is allowed to look only to the agent, it must be on the footing that the sale of the goods is only as between the seller and the agent. What, then, is the relation between the agent and the principal as regards the goods? Clearly, the agent cannot be vendor of the goods to his own principal. It seems to create a legal illogicality if, though the agent buys for the principal, the seller is not to be held to have sold to the principal. It seems logically to

Bowen, J., held that different considerations apply to the case when a principal's existence is disclosed though his name is not disclosed. The reasons for this distinction may be gathered from his judgment. The difference between the two classes of cases seems to be that the seller, when the existence of a principal is disclosed, may be considered as, to some extent, relying on the credit of the unnamed principal. It was a part of the contract in the case we are discussing that the seller should be entitled to a disclosure of the name of a principal deemed satisfactory by the selling broker by a certain time, or else that the purchasing broker should be liable as principal himself. It seems somewhat strange, but it does not appear from the statement of the facts made by the learned judge whether this term was insisted on, and the name of the principal demanded by the plaintiffs. If not, an argument might have arisen that the plaintiffs had elected to trust the agent. It would appear probable that the name of the principals must have been disclosed in accordance with the terms of the contract. If the seller is to be considered as relying to some extent, at least, on the credit of the principal, it is obvious that the case differs very materially from the first class of cases, where the existence of a principal is not disclosed until after payment made to the agent. It may be urged on behalf of the principal in such a case that he does not know that the agent has disclosed the existence of a principal, but that is answered by the fact that he has authorized the agent to bind him to a third party, and knows that he has done so. It seems, perhaps, rather strange that the principal's conduct having been exactly the same in both classes of cases (for in either case he may not know what the agent has done with regard to the disclosure of his principal), in the one he should have to pay twice over, and in the other not. But in the first class of cases the seller, having been content to contract upon the credit of the agent only, has no hardship to complain of, if the principal having paid the agent, he is compelled to look to the person with whom alone he contracted for payment: In the latter class of cases the seller has relied upon the

cases, but it has nothing to do with the consideration that the acceptor enabled currency to be given to the bill by his act, or with any particular degree of favour which the law accords to the negotiability of bills of exchange. There is no doubt that the law favours the negotiability of bills of exchange in the sense that the bona fide holder's apparently good title cannot be impeached by reason of fraud on the part of a previous holder, and also that a bill indorsed in blank may be transferred by a person who has no title to it himself; but the present case differs altogether, because the -question here is whether there was a good indorse ment so as to confer the quality of negotiability on the bill, and it is clear that an acceptor by accepting does not necessarily admit the indorsement.

It seems to us that though the case may not turn on 8 question of authority, strictly so called, it does turn on the responsibility of a person for the acts of another whom he has intrusted with certain facilities, and set in motion for a certain purpose. Of course, in one sense, there was no authority given by the acceptor to commit a forgery-that is, there was no actual authority, neither was there any holding out of authority by conduct, for the bona fide holder of the bill did not act upon the experience of any previous transactions. But the mere fact that the acceptor enabled the fraud to be committed is not enough. If a man leaves in a drawer a blank acceptance, which is afterwards stolen and filled in by the thief, and passed away to a bona fide holder, the acceptor is not liable: Baxendale v. Bennett (26 W. R. 899.) The basis of the acceptor's liability in the case we are discussing seems to be that he had intrusted another with the blank acceptance and set him in motion for the purpose of obtaining money thereon, so giving him in fact the power of filling up the blank acceptance in whatever way he pleased, it being quite immaterial to the acceptor how he did so. A man who gives to another the unlimited sort of commission involved in giving a blank acceptance cannot afterwards as against a bona fide holder be heard to say that that other has exceeded his authority. In the case of Baxendale v. Bennett the act of the defendant in creating the blank acceptance enabled the stealer to give currency to the bill, but, as that happened entirely contrary to the will and intention of the defendant, he was not liable. Here the acceptor does will and intend that the blank acceptance shall be put in circulation and gives it to a person for the purpose, leaving it to such person to fill it in and obtain money upon it. The principle seems to be that where a person, for the purpose of procuring a benefit to himself-viz., an advance of money by means of a negotiable instrument— commits to another entirely the choice of the mode of carrying out the transaction, intrusting to him the business of framing the negotiable instrument to which the signature will give apparent validity, and so, giving that other the means of obtaining money from a bona fide holder, he cannot afterwards be heard to say that the instrument is void. The case really turns on the fact that the acceptor in blank trusted the person who committed the forgery, and voluntarily gave him the means of forging a negotiable instrument.

Following the ancient custom, Lord Selborne was sworn in as Lord Chancellor at Lincoln's-inn on Thursday morning in the presence of all the Chancery Judges, and Mr. Glasse, as the senior Queen's Counsel present, moved, "That the oaths be recorded."

The business of the Bradford County Court has during the past few years increased to such an extent that it has been found necessary to appoint a second registrar. Mr. Edmund Lee, who has been deputy-registrar about two years, has received the appointment and will act in conjunction with the present registrar, Mr. George Robinson.

Reviews.

COSTS.

COSTS IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE AND OTHER COURTS.
By JOHN SCOTT, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. FOURTH
EDITION. Stevens & Sons.

This new edition of Mr. Scott's well-known work embodies the changes effected since the Judicature Acts, and, so far as we have examined it, appears to be accurate and complete. The bills given include, besides costs in the several Divisions of the High Court, costs of parliamentary and municipal election petitions; costs under the Regulation of Railways Act, 1873; costs of arbitrations, and costs in the county courts, Probate, &c., Division, Houses of Lords and Commons, Crown Office, and bankruptcy. Short practical notes are added; and to the sections relating to costs of parliamentary election petitions there is prefixed an introduction, likely to be of special interest at present, in which the whole subject of these costs is discussed, and extracts are given from the judgments in the modern cases. The least satisfactory part of the book is the index, which strikes us as somewhat scanty.

INTERNATIONAL LAW.

ELEMENTS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. By HENRY WHEATON,
LL.D. SECOND ENGLISH EDITION. By A. C. BOYD,
Barrister-at-Law. Stevens & Sons.

It is not yet two years since we reviewed Mr. Boyd's first edition of this work, and the present edition offers little matter for fresh observation. Mr. Boyd has printed the Treaty of Berlin and the Anglo-Turkish Convention in full in the appendix, but we observe that he has omitted to notice in the text, at p. 259, the provisions of the first mentioned treaty relating to the neutrality of the Danube. Nor have we found any reference to the question of whether the prohibition of privateering by the Declaration of Paris would extend to ships which, though belonging to private owners, and intended to be used only for capturing merchant ships, are placed under the control of the State and are manned by officers of the State. The question has, since the publication of the last edition, threatened to become a practical one; and it would at least have been desirable that the Prussian decree for a voluntary marine, issued during the Franco-German War, should have been noticed.

SNELL'S EQUITY.

THE PRINCIPLES OF EQUITY. By EDMUND H. T. SNELL,
Barrister-at-Law. FIFTH EDITION. TO WHICH IS
ADDED AN EPITOME OF THE EQUITY PRACTICE. SECOND
EDITION. By ARCHIBALD BROWN, Barrister-at-Law.
Stevens & Haynes.

In the present edition Mr. Brown has certainly im

proved upon his last edition of Snell, but there are points

remaining on which further amendment is not undesirable. There is occasionally a lack of precision and definiteness of statement, as, for instance, in the statement on page 283 as to executors' retainer:-"But any creditor, who is at the same time executor of the deceased, may retain to himself his own debt in full, at least out of the legal assets and as against other creditors in equal degree, but subject to certain restrictions." What a student wants is to have concisely stated the exact limits of a doctrine. Again, at p. 318 the student is directed to " see an unreported case of Hill v. Astley, Lanc. Ch. Crt. 1878 (Little, V.C.)"; it would be instructive to know how and where this case is to be On page 511 Mr. Brown first of all cites Matthew v. Northern Assurance Company (27 W. R. 52) as an authority for the proposition that an assurance society is not in a fiduciary relation towards the person entitled to the policy moneys, and then remarks, "But see In re

seen.