"Dined in Hall in the following Terms:-Hilary, Easter, and Trinity, 1833; Easter and Trinity, 1834; Easter and Trinity, 1835; Easter and Trinity, 1836; Easter and Trinity, 1837.

"Performed Exercises: 19th April, 1837; 27th April, 1837; 28th April, 1837; 29th, 30th, and 31st May, 1837.

"At a Council held 15th April, 1839. Upon the Petition of WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, a Fellow of this Society, praying that his name may be taken off the books, having given up his intention of being called to the Bar: It is Ordered accordingly."

The Indian Government, still acted upon, it would appear, by the impulse of activity communicated by Macaulay, and freshened by Sir James Stephen, sends us a conspicuous monument of its legislative zeal in the shape of a large volume, being the Report of the Indian Law Commission, 1879, embracing Bills dealing with the following subjects, several of which are of far-reaching import :-Negotiable Instruments, Transfer of Property, Alluvion, Master and Servants, Easements, and Trusts. The Commissioners (Hon. Whitley Stokes, C.S.I., member of the Council of the Viceroy; Hon. Charles Turner, C.I.E., then Puisne Judge, High Court, N.W.P., now Sir Charles, and Chief Justice of Madras; and Hon. Raymond West, M.A., a Puisne Judge of the High Court, Bombay), appear to have been fully alive alike to the importance of codification, and to its special difficulties in a country such as India. "In its larger sense," therefore, as they remark, "of a general assemblage of all the laws of a community no attempt has as yet been made in this country [i.e., India] to satisfy the conception of a code." And in this widest sense of the word, they are probably right in thinking that "the time for its realisation has not arrived." Still they distinctly state their conviction that the "ultimate design of forming into a general code," the distinct Acts dealing with the several branches of the law," ought never to be lost sight of." The truth is that only those who know something of the diversities of Indian Races, Laws and Religions, can have the faintest idea of the special difficulties attending upon codification in India. And the very action of European society and modes of thought upon native Indian society and modes of thought, is, as the Commissioners justly remark, not one of the least of these difficulties.

We should like to know something of the line taken up on their return home, by those Indian students who come over to

this country to obtain the status of barrister-at-law. We fear that they do not necessarily imbibe much of the scientific juridical spirit during their attendance at the Inns of Court, while much of what they have to learn must be to them perplexing knowledge which they can scarcely know how to dispose of when acquired. This applies most particularly to Real Property Law. A Hindoo or Mohammedan coming straight from a Presidency College or University to sit at the feet of Mr. Joshua Williams, Q.C., must feel somewhat as though in a dream, the true interpretation whereof he sees no means of discerning. It is a pity, we think, that the home authorities do not devise some special courses for Indian students, which should give them the chance of laying in a store of Legal Principles upon which they might draw in after life, and which might enable them to become practical helpers in the work of Indian Codification.

An Australian Inter-Colonial Conference has lately had under its consideration the desirableness of constituting a Court of Appeal in and for the Australian Colonies. This proposal is subjected to a somewhat severe criticism by the Australian and New Zealand Gazette. Two points are specially raised: 1, the competence of the Conference, and 2, the value of the Court, if established. These are points upon which more information than is at present before us would be desirable. It is obvious, of course, that a Court of Appeal which had not adequate power would be quite as useless as a Court which had not confidence. The Australian and New Zealand Gazette doubts whether the Appeal to the proposed Court can be deemed final. It is permissible to doubt whether constitutionally it could be final, in the present relation of the colonies to the mother country. But the question is an interesting one to have had mooted, and however it may be decided, is one which, as the Gazette justly observes, can scarcely be unimportant in the great work of Australasian progress. We shall hope to hear more of it, and shall be glad if Dr. Hearn, the learned author of the "Aryan Household," applies himself to the pros and cons of an Australian Court of Appeal.

Since our attention was first drawn to this subject we have received copies of the Australian Law Times (Melbourne, C. F.

Maxwell) for February 19th, and March 5th, in which occur some remarks of interest on points not already noticed by us. We observe that the Sydney Conference, on the 19th of January, passed a resolution that it was "desirable that there should be complete reciprocity between the several Australian Colonies and New Zealand as to the admission of Members to the Bar in such colonies." To this, however, our Melbourne contemporary demurs, that whereas in Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland, the legal profession is divided as in England, in the other Colonies which took part in the Conference this division does not exist. Therefore while sympathizing with the aim of the resolution, our contemporary considers that its adoption would be unfair to those Eastern Colonies which have retained the usage of the Mother Country. Instead of the conference proposal, the Australian Law Times would establish reciprocity between the two branches in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, and "promulgate such arrangements as might be found equitable for the admission of practitioners from the other colonies." This last suggestion reads somewhat vaguely, but we shall probably find it more fully worked out in a future number. The question is far from being devoid of interest at home, whether in its bearing on the relations of the two branches in this country, or on the prospects of those Members of the English Bar who from time to time leave home for Colonial practice.

The Bill on Copyright which was introduced by Lord John Manners, Viscount Sandon, and Sir John Holker, then Attorney-General, has been placed in the hands of Mr. G. W. Hastings, M.P., and is shortly to be brought into the House. If the state of public business admits, it may have been introduced before these pages see the light. The Bill has undergone some serious modifications under its new auspices. It now bears the names of Viscount Sandon, Mr. Hanbury Tracy, and Sir Gabriel Goldney, besides that of Mr. Hastings. The noble Viscount, whose name was on the original Bill, must have been converted on at least one very important point, viz., the duration of Copyright, if he goes heartily with the new Bill. To the proposed substitution of a fixed period from (compulsory) registration for the author's life and thirty years of the original Bill, we ourselves are not converted. The arguments

on both sides have been already discussed in this Review, especially in connection with the Report of the Royal Commission (Law Magazine and Review, No. CCXXXVIII., November, 1879). We are aware that the Dutch Chambers have a Bill under consideration, which takes the same line as that of Mr. Hastings's Bill, but we cannot think for a moment that the mass of European Legislatures have knowingly adopted an unpractical system in protecting the author for his life and a fixed period after his death. If the date of the author's death can be ascertained in France, in Spain, in Russia, in Germany, in Belgium, and in Portugal, it can surely be ascertained also in England.

304

Reviews of New Books.

A Treatise on Private International Law, with principal reference to its practice in England, by JOHN WESTLAKE, Q.C., Hon. LL.D., Edinburgh, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. (W. Maxwell & Son. 1880.)

A Treatise on the Conflict of Laws, by Friedrich Carl von Savigny. Translated, with Notes and Appendix, by WILLIAM GUTHRIE, Advocate. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark; London: Stevens & Sons. (2nd edition, revised.) 1880.

International Law, by WILLIAM EDWARD HALL, M.A., Barristerat-Law. (Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1880.)

Commentaire sur les Eléments du Droit International, de HEnri WHEATON, par WILLIAM BEACH LAWRENCE. Tome IV. (Leipzig: Brockhaus; London: Trübner. 1880.)

The Law of Extradition, by A. J. SPEARS, D.D. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1880.)

Tratado de Derecho Internacional, por AMANCIO ALCORTA. (Buenos Ayres: M. Biedma. 1878.)

Tratado de Derecho Internacional Publico, por PASCUAL FIORE, vertido en Castellano por GARCIA DE MORENO. Tomo I. (Madrid: Gongora y Cia. 1880.)

The list of works, both of doctrine and practice, which we place at the head of this notice, we place there, not because we can possibly hope to deal with more than two or three of the number in our present issue, but because we think it well to show the attention which International Law is more and more attracting to itself in all parts of the civilised world. The majority of the list contains the names of writers already well known, and acknowledged masters of their subject. Not the least distinguished of the authors now before us, are writers who have contributed to our own pages. Portions of the historical matter embodied by Mr. Westlake in his present volume, which takes the place of his standard work, first published in 1856, appeared in the Law Magazine and Review; and Mr. Guthrie, condensed from Rudcrft's Memoir, a notice for this Review of the life and works of Von Savigny. Mr. Beach Lawrence, whose loss we have had to regret since this notice was in type, was also an