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including rights of water, and may acquire such buildings and offices as they require, and have facilities for acquiring land compulsorily, with the sanction of the Judge of Assize, subject to appeal to the Privy Council. As in England, they may institute or defend legal proceedings necessary for the promotion or protection of the interests of the inhabitants of their county, and may oppose Bills in Parliament, but may not promote them. They will also have the same powers as the council of a municipal corporation have, to make bylaws in relation to their county, or any specified part or parts thereof. An entirely new power, hitherto not possessed by any one, is given for dealing with cases of exceptional distress. A county council may apply to the Local Government Board to relax the ordinary rules, and sanction the grant of outdoor relief for a limited period; but the power of deciding whether relief may be so given, rests with the Board and not with the councils, who can only suggest this relaxation of the ordinary law. The appointment of coroners, as in England, is transferred from the electors to the county councils; and they will, of course, appoint their own officers for the future.

An important power now possessed by county councils in England, is not given to those in Ireland-the management of the police. This arises from the different state of affairs previously existing. In England the only officials who exercised police functions, prior to the reign of the present sovereign, were parish constables and the watchmen appointed in a few towns. Early in her Majesty's reign, powers were given for the appointment of county constabulary, and the control of the new force was given to the justices in quarter sessions, who were then the recognized county authority. When county councils were established in England, it was thought that the management of the large police forces then in existence could not be entrusted to the new bodies just coming into existence, without some safeguards; and

accordingly the control was given to a joint committee appointed partly by the justices and partly by the county council. The expense is defrayed partly by the ratepayers and partly out of the Consolidated Fund. In Ireland the constabulary was established, not so much for detecting crime as to maintain order throughout the country. The expense is paid out of the Consolidated Fund, and the force, like the police of the metropolis, has always been controlled by the central government and not by the county authority. The grand jury had no administrative powers as regards the constabulary, and consequently the county councils succeed to none. At present, at any rate, such matters are not likely to be put under their control.

It is, of course, intended that there shall be no violent dislocation, but that the system of administration hitherto in operation shall be continued, though under the control of elected representatives in the place of irresponsible nominees. The existing county officials appointed by the grand juries are to continue to discharge their functions as officials of the new county councils. It is also to be hoped that a fair proportion of those who have in the past done good work as grand jurors will be elected on the new councils, and thus be able to give their counties the benefit of their experience. In England, when county councils were first established, ten years ago, it was found that men, who had experience and had done good administrative work as magistrates at quarter sessions, were generally elected on the county councils. Such men have shaped and guided the action of the county councils, and have contributed largely to render them the business-like administrative bodies which they admittedly are. Whether men of a similar position will be elected to the county councils in Ireland, in sufficient numbers to be able to influence their course of action, time alone can show. The grand jury in every county can appoint three persons, who have served as grand jurors, to be additional members of the

first council for their county, and every county council may hereafter co-opt one or two persons, qualified to be councillors, as additional members. All rural district councils in a county are also to be represented on the county council by their chairman, or, if he cannot take the place, by some other member assigned by them for the purpose. There are no aldermen, so with these few exceptions all the councillors will be directly elected.

The total number of additional councillors can never be large enough to exercise a controlling influence over a county council, and its policy will necessarily be determined in the main by the votes of the elected members. If they allow themselves to be influenced by considerations other than those of the interest of their locality, the result will be disastrous. Some persons of extreme views, who pretend to represent public opinion in Ireland, have avowed that they look on the new governing bodies now called into existence, as merely a means to help on their ideal of securing the separation of Ireland from England. If the councils should be actuated by such views, and, copying the example of some existing elective bodies, should neglect their legitimate work of administration in order to further their political aims, they will justify the criticisms of those who say that Irishmen are incapable of managing their own affairs in a businesslike way, and will do much to render the realization of their own aspirations impossible. But if, as those who have passed the new Act anticipate, the majority of those elected on the councils set themselves to the discharge of their legitimate functions, and show that they can and will administer the affairs of their counties as intelligently and as honestly as the grand jurors whom they supersede, the experiment of extending Home Rule to Ireland, in the true interpretation of the term, will be proved a success. The new Act goes far to satisfy all legitimate wishes for the management of local affairs by the people chiefly interested. If those who have

to administer it show themselves determined to use it to the best advantage, any defects which may become apparent will doubtless in due time be remedied by Parliament.

J. V. VESEY FITZ-GERALD.

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III. " ACTIO PERSONALIS MORITUR CUM PERSONÂ" AS APPLIED TO NEGLIGENCE.

WHEN, through the negligence of a Railway Company,

a passenger sustains personal injuries, and after a short interval dies without having received any compensation, can his executor recover against the company the medical expenses incurred, and the pecuniary loss sustained by the testator in consequence of such injuries? In Bradshaw v. Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company (L.R. 10 C.P. 189), this question was decided by Grove and Denman, JJ., in the affirmative. And accordingly the plaintiff in that case was allowed to retain a verdict for £200, of which £40 represented expenses incurred by the deceased for medical attendance, and 160 the loss occasioned to his estate owing to his having been prevented by the accident from attending to his business. This case was decided in the year 1875. In the following year the decision was questioned by Mellor and Quain, JJ., in Leggott v. Great Northern Railway Company (L.R. 1 Q.B.D. 599); but, as they formed only a court of co-ordinate jurisdiction, it was not competent for them to overrule it. In the latter case the plaintiff's husband had received injuries, from which he, after an interval, died. His widow, thereupon, as administratrix, brought an action under Lord Campbell's Act [9 & 10 Vict. c. 93], in which a verdict was, by consent, entered for £500. She then, as administratrix, brought a second action against the company, to recover damages in respect of the diminution of her husband's

personal estate during his lifetime, owing to his inability to attend to business after the accident. On demurrer it was held that the former action under Lord Campbell's Act did not operate as an estoppel, and that, according to the decision in Bradshaw v. Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company (L.R. 10 C.P. 189), the maxim, Actio personalis moritur cum personâ, did not apply.

Recently, in 1892, a similar case came before the Irish Court of Appeal-Daly v. Dublin, Wicklow, and Wexford Railway Company (30 L.R. Ir. 514)—in which Bradshaw v. Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company (L.R. 10 C.P. 189), was also followed.

But it is submitted that both principle and authority are against the rule laid down in these cases.

It is clear that, independently of Lord Campbell's Act, no new, separate, and distinct cause of action arises in such circumstances by reason of the subsequent death of the person injured, because negligence causing damage is the gist of the action, and no new development of the damage can create a fresh cause of action. Thus, in the case of Read v. Great Eastern Railway Company (L.R. 3 Q.B. 555), an action was brought under Lord Campbell's Act by the widow of a man who had died in consequence of injuries sustained through the defendant's negligence. There was a plea of payment and satisfaction in the lifetime of the deceased. On demurrer it was held that the cause of action was the defendant's negligence, and that the death of the plaintiff's husband did not create a fresh cause of action; and accordingly the plaintiff could not recover. [See also Griffith v. Dudley (L.R. 9 Q.B.D. 357), and Haigh v. Royal Mail, etc., Company (52 L.J. Q.B. 640).] And in a recent case from Canada-Robinson v. Canadian Pacific Railway Company, [1892] (A.C. 481)-Lord Watson, in delivering the judgment of the Privy Council, says (see p. 486): “The Code became law in the year 1866, and section 1056 superseded the

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