MR. T. BATEMAN NAPIER, Clifford's-inn Prizeman, Winner of the Incorporated Law Society's only (the Scott) Scholarship for the year 1876, and Conveyancing Gold Medallist, prepares Students, both privately and in class, for the Preliminary, Intermediate, and Final. Students are also carefully prepared through the post. Thirty-four pupils out of the last 38 sent up have been successful. Several gentlemen are now reading, and the regular classes for November commence on Tuesday, the 10th of August.-For terms, &c., apply, No. 1, Mitre-court-buildings, King's Bench-walk, Temple, E.C. ENDOWMENTS and ANNUITIES granted on libera Iterms. UNION FIRE and LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY. Chief Office-126, Chancery-lane, London, W.C. The Funds in hand and Capital subscribed amount to upwards of Chairman-JAMES CUDDON, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, Goldsmith-build ing, Temple. £1,500,000 sterling. Deputy-Chairman-C. PEMBERTON, Esq. (Lee & Pembertons), Solicitor 44, Lincoln's-inn-fields. Every description of Fire and Life Insurance business transacted. The Directors invite attention to the new form of Life Policy, which tree from all conditions. The Company advances Money on Mortgage of Life Interest and Reversions, whether absolute or contingent. Prospectuses, Copies of the Directors' Report, and Annual Balance sheet, and every information. sent post free, on application to FRANK M'GEDY, Actuary and Secretary. ESTABLISHED 1851. BIRKBECK BANK. Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane. Current Accounts opened according to the usual practice of other Bankers, and Interest allowed on the minimum monthly balances when not drawn below £25. No commission charged for keeping Accounts. The Bank also receivesmoney on Deposit at Three per cent. Interest, repayable on demand. The Bank undertakes for its Customers, free of charge, the custody of Deeds, Writings, and other Securities and Valtables; the collection of Bills of Exchange, Dividends, and Coupons; and the purchase and sale of Stocks and Shares. Letters of Credit and Circular Notes issued. A Pamphlet, with full particulars, on application. 31st March, 1880. FRANCIS RAVENSCROFT, Manager. LONDON GAZETTE (published by authority) and LONDON and COUNTRY ADVERTISEMENT OFFICE. No. 117, CHANCERY LANE, FLEET STREET. Advertisement Agent, direct the attention of the Legal Profession to the advantages of his long experience of upwards of thirty years, in the special in sertion of all pro forma notices, &c., and hereby solicits their continued RESTAURANT PARISIEN (LATE MADME. JANET), 10, CASTLE-STREET, HOLBORN (OPPOSITE THE PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY). First-class Luncheon Bar for gentlemen in the neighbourhood. Public and Private Dining Rooms. Dinners for 3s. 6d., 4s. 6d., 5s. 6d., 7s. 6d., and 10s. 6d. Will be served in the Private Dining Rooms; no extra charge for room or pianoforte. Choicest Wines, Beer, and Spirits.Proprietors, DOBER BROTHERS. GLASGOW and the HIGHLANDS.-Royal Route, via Crinan and Caledonian Canals, by new swift steamer COLUMBA or the IONA, from Bridge Wharf, Glasgow, daily at 7 a.m., and from Greenock at 9 a.m., conveying Passengers for Oban, North and West Highlands. Official Guide Book 2d, Illus trated Copy 6d.-Bill, with map and tourist fares free, at Messrs. CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, 214, Piccadilly, London, or by post free from DAVID MACBRAYNE, 119, Hope-street, Glasgow. PARTRIDGE AND COOPER, LAW AND GENERAL STATIONERS, 1 & 2, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON, E.C. Law Copying and Engrossing. Deeds and Writings engrossed and copied on the Premises, with STATEMENTS OF CLAIM AND DEFENCE, AFFIDAVITS, and other PLEADING, Printed at 1s. per folio. DEEDS, CONVEYANCES, MORTGAGES, &c., Printed in form for Registration. Discount allowed for cash on agreed accounts. LITHOGRAPHY. BUILDING ABSTRACTS, BRIEFS, PETITIONS, DRAFTS, MINUTES OF PARCHMENT AND LEGAL PAPERS. The Companies Acts, 1862 to 1879. Every requisite onder the above Acts supplied on the shortest notice The BOOKS and FORMS kept in stock for immediate use MEMORANDA and ARTICLES OF ASSOCIATION speedily printed in the proper form for registration and distribution. SHARE CERTIFICATES, DEBENTURES, &c., engraved and printed. OFFICIAL SEALS designed and executed. Solicitors' Account Books. RICHARD FLINT & CO. Stationers, Printers, Engravers, Registration Agents, &c., 49, FLEET-STREET, LONDON, E.C. (corner of Serjeants" inn). Annual and other Returns Stamped and Filed. KINAHAN'S LL WHISKY. Gold Medal, Paris Exhibition, 1878; Dublin Exhibition, 1865, the Gold Medal. 20, Great Titchfield Street, London, W. LD PARCHMENT PUR support.-N.B. One copy of advertisement only required, and the strictest WASTE PAPER CHASED in any quantities. care and promptitude assured. Officially stamped forms for adverstise ment and file of "London Gazette "kept. By appointment. AN IMPORTANT CONVENIENCE TO LAW WRITERS AND SOLICITORS. STEPHENS' SCARLET INK FOR STEEL PENS. This new Ink supplies the demand continually made but never before met, for a Red Ink which is uninjured by Steel or other Metallic Pens. Steel Pens left in this ink for months do not impair the beauty of its colour, nor are the Pens in the least corroded by it. The existing Red Inks rapidly destroy Steel Pens, and lose their red colour if used with other than Gold or Quill Pens. This new colour is a very rich scarlet red of great beauty. The colour of this ink is not affected by use upon parchment, and is consequently of great value to Solicitors and Draughtsmen. Sold in stone bottles, retail at 1s., 2s., 3s; and Imperial Quarts of 40 ounces at 6s. each. Also in glass bottles at 6d. and 1s. each. SOLD BY ALL STATIONERS. old ledgers, newspapers, magazines, letters, invoices, &c. All papers destroyed, being re WASTE PAPER duced to pulp for re-manufacture. Vans collect daily within twelve miles of London. Highest prices returned per P.0.0. Country parcels secure immediate attention. WASTE PAPER ley Wharf, Paddington. PHILLIPS, MILIS, & Co.'s Works, 3, Amber DINNEFORD'S MAGNESIA. The Medical Profession for over Forty Years have approved of this paro solution as the best remedy for ACIDITY of the STOMACH, HEARTBURN, HEADACHE, GOUT and INDIGESTION, And as the safest Aperient for Delicate Constitutions, Ladies, Children, and Infants. DINNEFORD'S MAGNESIA. they have now been in operation for more than three Solicitors' Journal. months; yet it will be observed, from a case which we LONDON, JULY 17, 1880. CONTENTS. note elsewhere, that a learned Vice-Chancellor has failed to recognize the existence of one of these rules specially relating to a class of actions among the most frequent in his branch in the High Court. We cannot help thinking that among the changes incident to the removal to the Royal Courts of Justice, the establishment of a legal sandwich man (who might be a decayed Q.C.) to promenade the building with placards of the last new rules, would be a not undesirable novelty. to be Sold is Burnt Down..... Plans referred to in Particulars of Sale 701 Refreshment Room in the Royal Courts of Justice............ 702 LEADERS: Separate Estate CASES OF THE WEEK: How Is IT that the Master of the Rolls, who, when sitting in the Court of Appeal, startles the profession by his revolutionary doctrines as to the authority of previous decisions, in his own court sometimes shows unwonted deference to cases laying down doctrines of questionable justice? In Poole v. Adams (12 W. Ashworth v. Munn .......................................................................................... 704 R. 683) Vice-Chancellor Kindersley held that, if, in D'Angibau, In re ............................................................................................... 705 the interval between the signature of the contract Kirkham v. Peel.................................................................................................................... 706 for purchase of an insured house and completion, .. 702 Lord Justice Bramwell on the Employers' Liability Bill ...... 703 RECENT DECISIONS ..... 704 Rogers, Ex parte Leavitt v. Williams Webster v. Whewall.................................... 707 Ballard v. Shutt............................................................ 707 Marsden v. Sambell......... ............................................................................................ 707 APPOINTMENTS ..................................................................... 708 OBITUARY COUNTY COURTS ..... THE LABOUR of keeping up with the voluminous judicial legislation of the day is no doubt severe, and the manuer in which new Rules of Court are made to take effect before they are issued to the profession has, in a measure, accustomed us to the idea of a double set of laws; the one the laws actually in force yet in the bosom of the committee of judges; the other the laws not in force, yet the only laws known to the majority of the judges and to the profession. But it does not seem to be desirable that this arrangement should be extended to Rules of -Court which, having at length passed out of the exclusive knowledge of the committee, have been printed for the benefit of the public. We were enabled to lay before our readers the new Rules of the Supreme Court, April, 1880, a few days before they came into operation, and the house is burned down, the purchaser must bear the loss, although the landlord has received the insurance money. "Whatever," he said, "the rule of the court might be as to enforcing specific performance in a case where the property was burnt down, it was clear that the contract remained good at law, and that the purchaser might have been sued for breach of contract in refusing to complete and pay his purchasemoney." This means, of course, that the vendor may get his purchase-money twice over; once from the insurance office and again from the purchaser. In the recent case of Rayner v. Preston (L. R. 14 Ch. D. 297), the same question came before the Master of the Rolls. A house which was contracted to be sold had been insured by the vendors against fire. Between the date of the contract and completion, the house was injured by fire to the amount of £330, and this sum was paid to the vendors by the insurance company. The vendors refused either to hand over the money to the purchaser or to expend it in reinstating the premises. The Master of the Rolls held that the purchaser was not entitled, as against the vendors, to the benefit of the insurance. Contrary to his usual habit, the learned judge does not seem to have discussed the question of principle. He thought that the question had been settled long ago by decisions, and he declined to take upon himself to alter the law so laid down. Now, the only authority besides Poole v. Adams seriously relied on by the Master of the Rolls was Lord Eldon's decision in Paine v. Mellor (6 Ves. 349), which was not in point. In that case specific performance of a contract for sale of a house was resisted, on the ground that since the contract the vendor had allowed the policy of fire insurance to lapse without giving notice to the purchaser of the approaching expiration of the policy, and the house had since been burnt down. Lord Eldon held that the non-communication of the approaching lapse of the policy was no objection to specific performance, because it was the house that was bought, not the benefit of any existing policy. It is, no doubt, the law, in accordance with this decision, that a vendor is not bound, in the absence of express stipulation, to keep up the insurance on the premises. But it is a wholly different question whether the vendor receiving insurance money which, it is clear, since the decision in Ex parte Goreley (4 De G. J. & S. 477), might, at the request of any person interested in the premises, have been required to be laid out in reinstating them, shall not be considered as holding the money received by him under the policy upon an implied trust to make good the damage. The Master of the Rolls hinted that, if the question were to be decided for the first time, he might have devised some arrangement which would be fair to the purchaser, and we can only express our regret that he could not see his way, on the ground of the decision in Ex parte Goreley, to depart from a doctrine which really rests only on the decision of a court of co-ordinate jurisdiction, and, as Mr. Dart has said, could not be acted on for his own benefit by any honest man. THE DECISION of the Court of Appeal on Tuesday last in the case of Tamplin v. James, comes opportunely after our recent remarks on plans annexed to particulars of sale. In this case there was no mistake in the plan, which showed the exact boundaries of the property to be sold. It was referred to in the particulars, and was produced at the sale. But in the course of the festive proceedings which often accompany a country sale by auction, a glass of sherry was spilt over the map; the auctioneer's clerk covered the map with blotting-paper to dry the stain, and the purchaser did not inspect the map. It appeared that when he made his hid he was under the bona fide impression that some gardens, which did not belong to the vendors but had been occupied by the tenants of the houses sold, formed part of the property sold. The particulars of sale were perfectly accurate. The court held that the defendant, not having taken the trouble to look at the particulars of sale, was not entitled to assert that he thought that the gardens were included in what he was buying, and he must be held to his bargain. It is comforting to learn that the vendor is not bound to dispel the misapprehensions of intending purchasers. IT IS EXPECTED that the refreshment-room in the Royal Courts of Justice will be opened on or about the 3rd of August. Tenders for the supply of refreshments are now being advertised for. The Albany Law Journal cites from another American journal a case in which the question arose whether a telegraph operator could be compelled by subpoena to produce a dispatch sent by the defendant in a suit for divorce to her alleged paramour. The telegraph company asked that the operator might be excused from obeying the subpœna, on the ground that they were bound to their customers to keep all dispatches secret. The judge held that telegrams were not as such privileged communications, but were subject to compulsory production in the same manner as letters; that a telegram in charge of a company might be reached by the courts in the same manner as a letter in the hands of a messenger. If a dispatch is relevant and competent evidence, and is described with sufficient certainty in the subpoena, the company cannot refuse to produce it. In a case like the present, public policy does not require that any means of communication should be protected against examination. The committee of the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland appointed to consider the Employers' Liability Bill say in their report :-"A minority of the committee are of opinion that the Bill altogether is of a retrograde character. The law has of late years been advancing towards the rule that fault shall impose an obligation for redress on the authors of the fault alone, and that rule is regarded by the minority as a sounder rule than that now sought to be introduced. But the committee were of opinion that it would have been better, if practicable, to have protected workmen from the results of injury sustained in the course of their employment by a system of insurance, to which both workmen and employers should be bound to contribute, than by a legislative measure like the present Bill. The Bill makes no provision against the employers contracting with their workmen that they shall not be liable for damage sustained by the workmen through the fault of fellow-servants of whatever grade, and the committee do not suggest that any such restriction should be imposed on freedom of contract. But no doubt employers will take advantage of this to protect themselves; and it is in view of this that the committee would urge the consideration of an insurance system." SEPARATE ESTATE. In THE protection originally afforded to married women under the equitable doctrine of separate use seems, by recent decisions, to have been somewhat disturbed. It was a natural corollary from that doctrine that all engagements which a married woman might be fairly taken as having contracted on the credit of her separate property should be satisfied out of it; but the creditors of married women, proceeding, as was to be expected, to press the question as to what is to be taken as separate property, so as to be applicable under this corollary in satisfaction of their claims, appear at length to have got that question settled in their own favour to a degree which may almost defeat the purpose of the settlement under which the separate property is created. Vaughan v. Vanderstegen (2 W. R. 599, 2 Dr. 363), ViceChancellor Kindersley pointed out with great clearness that the principle of separate use, and the consequent liability of a married woman on a contract, was applicable to the right of property only; and that a power exercisable by a married woman, being no peculiar creation of a court of equity, had no relation to the doctrine of separate use. He held that when such a woman had a separate estate for her life, with a general power of appointment over the corpus after her decease, her creditors could not (except in the special case of fraud, immaterial to be here noticed) establish any claim against anything but her life interest, for that her capacity in equity to contract was the correlative of the special right of property which equity had conferred upon her, and which was limited to her life interest. And in this view he also held that it was immaterial whether the power was exercisable by act inter vivos or only by will. It is clear that if this be the correct view, the general rule which, in the case of a man or a feme sole, says that property appointed under a general power of appointment by will shall, on the failure of the general assets of the appointor, be applied in satisfaction of his debts, on the ground that he must be just before he is generous, has no application at all, because the claim against the married woman is ex hypothesi not a debt, except in so far as equity in vesting property in the woman has given her the means of satisfying it. But Vice-Chancellor Kindersley's decision, although it was followed in several cases, was dissented from in Johnson v. Gallagher (9 W. R. 506, 3 De G. F. & J. 494), and was finally overruled by the judgment of the Privy Council (delivered by James, L.J.) in London Chartered Bank of Australia v. Lemprière (21 W. R. 513, L. R. 4'P. C. 572), which laid down the rule that a her life, and then as she should, notwithstanding covertrust for a married woman for her separate use during ture, by deed or will appoint, and, in default of appoint. ment for her executors or administrators, is a trust of the corpus of the property for her separate use for all purposes. "Their lordships," says the judgment, "are satisfied that, on the weight of authority and on prin. ciple, they ought to treat this as, what in common sense and to common apprehension it would be, an absolute gift to the sole and separate use of the lady. The words are an expansion and expression of what would be implied in the words 'sole and separate use'; and they conceive themselves at liberty to hold that such a form of gift to a married woman without any restraint on anticipation vests, in equity, the entire corpus in her for all purposes, as fully as a similar gift to a man would vest it in him." The property was accordingly held liable to satisfy a parol contract made by the lady with her banker. by act inter vivos, and although it only alluded in In that case the settlement provided for a disposition terms to one mode of such disposition-namely, by deed-the court thought that, having a present absolute power of disposal, the woman must be taken for all purposes to have the absolute property, and must therefore be able to bind herself in respect to it in any way she pleased. But in the recent case of In re Harvey's Estate (28 W. R. 73, L. R. 13 Ch. D. 216), Vice-Chancellor Hall goes much beyond this, for he lays it down that, although the settlement gives a power of appointment by will only, the property is liable to the general engagements of the married woman after her decease assuming that she has exercised the power-in the same way that it would be in the case of a man or a feme sole. It does not appear to us that his lordship's judgment necessarily follows from any principle laid down in the case before the Privy Council. The observation sof Lord Justice James which we have quoted seem to show clearly enough that it was considered there that an absolute property was vested in the woman; and if that was so, there could be no question as to her power to bind it by her general engagements. It may be reasonable to treat the corpus as her property when she has a present power of irrevocably disposing of it. It is a different thing altogether to treat it as her property when the settlement, by making the power testamentary, expressly says that she is to have no power of disposition in her lifetime at all; and we therefore venture to doubt the soundness of the Vice-Chancellor's decision. But it well indicates the current tendency to treat a married woman, in so far as she is entitled to any control over property, as being entitled to no immunity which would not be accorded to her if unmarried. LORD JUSTICE BRAMWELL ON THE THE letter recently addressed by Lord Justice Bramwell friend being driven in his carriage who is injured by the negligence of his coachman. So the servant has no remedy for the negligence of the fellow-servant, because there being a contractual relation between himself and his master he has not made it one of the terms of the relation that the master should be liable. This is a very subtle and forcible way of putting the case, but we are not convinced that it is altogether unassailable. The law constantly annexes to a contract terms which the parties have not actually expressed or even contemplated, and we doubt whether the Lord Justice's argument does not leave room for the question why the law should not imply a term in the contract that the master should be responsible. We doubt whether the reason which actually governs in the case of the friend being driven in the master's carriage is that the friend has not, in fact, made it a term of the relation that the master should be responsible. In truth, neither the friend nor the master thought of the matter at all. The law does not make it a term of the relation, because it is not just that it should be so. The question that any plain man not versed in the law of contract or in legal abstractions will ask himself is why the master should be responsible to an outsider and not to his own servant, and we do not believe the Lord Justice's answer will be satisfactory to him. We do not think that in substance the matter is one of contract at all, any more than the carrier's liability as an insurer is really a matter of contract in the sense that carriers originliable. Unless a better ally intended to be so answer is capable of being given to the question why the master is not liable to the servant than that the servant did not expressly contract for his liability, the answer will not be satisfactory. If the master were not responsible to any one in the absence of some actual negligence on his part, no question of course would arise, but being responsible to an outsider, the question that in substance arises is, What is the substantial distinction between the position of an outsider and a servant in virtue of which it is just that in the one case the master should be responsible, and in the other not? We have frequently indicated what, in our opinion, that distinction is, and we will not repeat at length what we have said before. To our thinking, the distinction broadly is that the operation which the master intrusts to the fellow-servant is carried on for the joint benefit of the servant and himself. The servant is as much a party to its being so intrusted as the master. The outsider may say that he has nothing to do with the master's trusting to the coachman to drive his carriage, and that if the master for whose benefit the carriage is driven does not drive it himself, he ought to be responsible for the man who does. This line of argument does not, as it seems to us, in justice lie in the mouth of the footman who receives wages for standing behind the carriage which at the time he hired himself he knew would be driven by a coachman. Unless a master delegated acts to servants, the whole system under which other servants' services become requisite and are sought for could not exist. This seems to us to distinguish the case of a servant from that of an outsider on broad and substantial grounds, and this distinction lies close to the evil of the economical objection to any sweeping alteration of the law. If the master's responsibility is not very carefully limited and defined, those enterprizes which exist for the joint benefit of the master and servants will be crippled and interfered with, and the servants, whose wages depend upon them as much as the master's profits, will in the end be injured. One of the provisions of the proposed Act seems to us to point to a sense on the part of its promoters that the change is of a somewhat doubtful nature. If it be just that a servant should have a cause of action against his master for negligence of a fellow-servant in the cases specified, on what principle can it be right that the amount of compensation should be limited to so many years' wages? We certainly fail to see the justice of this, assuming that the change proposed by the Bill is just. It seems to be a distinction between actions by persons of a particular class and actions in general, utterly indefensible on any ground of principle. The Daily Telegraph says that Mr. Francis Barnard Jennings, solicitor and agent for the Liberal party at the recent borough election for Ipswich, was charged on Monday with illegally voting, he being at the time a paid agent, and, consequently, not entitled to poll under the Ballot Act. The magistrates committed Mr. Jennings for trial at the assizes in his own recognizances of £100. Recent Decisions. AGREEMENTS CONTRARY TO THE POLICY (Ex parte Jay, In re Harrison, C. A. 28 W. R. 449, Cases of the Week. BANKRUPTCY PETITION-EVIDENCE OF ACT OF BANKRUPTCY-SERVICE OF DEBTOR'S SUMMONS-BANKRUPTCY ACT, 1869, s. 8-BANKRUPTCY RULES, 1870, R. 38.In a case of Ex parte Rogers, before the Court of Appeal on the 8th inst., a question arose as to the proof which ought to be This case, to which we have before briefly referred, hearing of a petition for an adjudication of bankruptcy. given of the commission of an act of bankruptcy on the is chiefly remarkable for the enunciation of law Section 8 of the Bankruptcy Act, 1869, provides that at the attributed in the Law Reports to the Chief Judge hearing of the petition, "the court shall require proof of the in the court below. The case was a contested claim debt of the petitioning creditor, and of the trading, if to a builder's materials upon his bankruptcy. The necessary, and of the act of bankruptcy," and that it may question arose upon a building agreement under which, adjourn the petition for the procuring of further evidence. in the event of the builder making default in any of the And sub-section 1 of section 80 provides that "every bankstipulations, or becoming bankrupt, the materials were ruptcy petition shall be accompanied by an affidavit verifying to become forfeited. Upon the bankruptcy happening, the statements contained in such petition." Rule 32 provides the Chief Judge held that the trustee had no title; and that, "after the presentation of the petition, and before sealing he is reported to have said: "Is it not a perfectly good the copies of the petition for service, the statements in the and valid contract? The debtor says in effect, If I petition shall be carefully investigated, and where some of the statements cannot be sworn to, witnesses may be become bankrupt, that which is mine shall become yours.' summoned to prove the same." And by rule 36, "where s There is no objection to such a contract as that." His debtor intends to show cause against a petition, he lordship cannot have had immediately in his mind the shall file a notice with the registrar, showing the statements language used by the Court of Queen's Bench in in the petition which he intends to deny or dispute." And Hawthorn v. Newcastle and North Shields Railway rule 38 provides that, "on the appearance of the debtor to Company (9 L. J. N. S. Q. B. 385), the case upon show cause against the petition, the petitioning creditor's which the Chief Judge relied in Ex parte Dickin (25 debt, trading, and act of bankruptcy, or such of those W. R. 258), his professed guide in the present case. matters as the debtor shall have given notice that he intends Lord Denman, C.J., there starts with saying: "We to dispute, shall again be proved, and if any new evidence of think it cannot be contended that this agreement, these matters, or any of them, shall be given, or any witness whether entered into by one subject to the bankrupt examination, and further time shall be desired to show or witnesses to such matter shall not be present for crosslaws or not, bears anything unlawful on its face. It has cause, the court shall, if it think the application no professed or necessary reference to the event of reasonable, grant such further time as it may think fit." bankruptcy; and assuming the solvency of the contracIn Ex parte Rogers, the act of bankruptcy alleged tors, and that bankruptcy was not in contemplation, and was the failure of the debtor to comply with the requirethat they were the owners of the chattels to be affected ments of a debtor's summons which the petitioning creditor by the deed, they might certainly stipulate with regard alleged that he had caused to be served on him. At the to them as the contractors have done by this instrument." hearing of the petition no evidence was adduced of the The stipulation there was simply that the company service of the debtor's summons other than the ordinary should have a lien upon the materials for the time being affidavit of the petitioner accompanying the petition and on the ground as a security for the completion of the verifying the statements contained in it. No evidence was works. If these contracts are read as merely giving a given by the person who had actually served the summons. right to seize, or contingent interest to arise, upon bankBut an application to dismiss the summons had previously ruptcy, then the principle plainly applies which is thus been made by the debtor, and in his affidavit in support expressed by Lord Justice James: "A simple stipulation of that application he had expressly admitted that the summons had been served upon him. An affidavit of the that upon a man's becoming bankrupt that which was service of the summons had also been made by the person his property up to the date of the bankruptcy shall go who had served it. But no notice had been given of any over to some one else, and be taken away from his crediintention to use the evidence given in the matter of the tors, is void, as being a violation of the policy of the summons upon the hearing of the petition. At the hearing bankrupt law." That was the reading of the contract the objection was taken that the service of the summons in Ex parte Jay which the Court of Appeal adopted. had not been proved, and that consequently the act of What would be the operation of the principle adverted bankruptcy had not been proved. The registrar, however, to in cases where the contract does transfer an interest made the adjudication. The Court of Appeal (JAMES, in property ab initio, though not quite an BRETT, and COTTON, L.JJ.) held that the objection, though question, yet seems to be covered by Ex parte Mackay purely technical, was a valid one. JAMES, L.J., said (21 W. R. 664) and Ex parte Williams (26 W. R. that the proceedings on the debtor's summons and the 274). Why should a mortgagee be allowed to stipu- petition were entirely distinct litigations, as distinct as if late for liberty to avail himself of his security in the the summons had been an action in the High Court, and single event of bankruptcy when he is not allowed the evidence in the one was not evidence in the other unless to acquire a further specific security in that event? notice was given to use it. The order of adjudication This latter was in Ex parte Williams considered to be was accordingly discharged, and the matter was remitted the substance of the attornment clause; which was in to the registrar to hear further evidence. We believe that it has been the practice in the London Court of Bankruptcy that view held ineffectual against the trustee. It is im- to treat the evidence of the service of a debtor's summons possible in these cases to make use of section 94 for the given in the matter of the summons as evidence upon the purpose of assisting a title under a contract vicious in hearing of a bankruptcy petition founded on the nonitself; for that section requires the condition to be satis- compliance of the summons as a matter of course. fied of the contract or dealing set up having been made decision is, therefore, of some practical importance.in good faith. SOLICITORS, W. Rogers; Travers, Smith, & Braithwaite. easy According to a return which has been made to the House of Lords, by the Solicitor to the Treasury, of all costs already incurred by the Treasury on behalf of Lord Penzance in the cases of Martin v. Mackonochie and of Mackonochie v. Martin, councels' fees have amounted to £579 2s. 6d.; shorthand writers have cost £217 198. 8d. ; total, £797 2s. 2d. This MORTMAIN-INTEREST IN LAND-BEQUEST TO CHARITY OF SHARE OF PARTNERSHIP ASSETS-9 GEO. 2, c. 36.—In a case of Ashworth v. Munn, before the Court of Appeal on the 9th inst., the question arose whether a gift by a testator to a charity of the proceeds of sale of his share in the assets of a partnership business was void under the statute 9 Geo. 2, c. 36. The assets of the partnership |