Land Values. By E. M. KONSTAM. London: Butterworth & Co.

1910.

Land Values. By E. S. Cox-SINCLAIR and T. HYNES, LL.B. London: Charles Knight & Co. 1910.

Land and Mineral Taxes. By D. O. EVANS and W. A. BARTON, B.A. London: Sweet & Maxwell. 1910.

Duties on Land Values. By G. H. DEVONSHIRE, M.A., and F. SAMUEL, M.A. London: Stevens & Haynes.

1910.

Land Values and Mineral Rights. By J. WYLIE. Jordan & Sons. 1910.

London:

The New Land Taxes. By T. B. NAPIER, LL.D. Stevens & Sons. 1910.

London :

Land Taxes and Mineral Right Duties. By T. MOFFET. London: John Murray. 1910.

Precedents in Conveyancing (Supplement). By Sir H. W. ELPHINSTONE, M.A., F. T. MAW, B.A., LL.B., and G. H. J. HURST, M.A. London: Sweet & Maxwell. 1910.

Third Edition. The Finance Act 1894 and subsequent Legislation. By J. E. HARMAN. London: Stevens & Sons. 1910.

Second Edition. Acts relating to Estate Duty. By J. WEBSTER-BROWN. London: Horace Cox. 1910.

Eighth Edition. Pratt and Redman's Income Tax Law. By J. H. REDMAN. London: Butterworth & Co. 1910.

Index to Income Tax Acts. By JABEZ Berry. Butterworth & Co.

Second Edition.

1910.

London:

The Finance (1909 and 1910) Act. By W. H. AGGS, M.A., LL.M. London: Sweet & Maxwell. 1910. Duties on Land Values. By J. A. LOVAT-FRASER, M.A., LL.M. London Waterlow & Sons.

1910.

There has seldom been such a startling revolution in Taxation initiated as when Mr. Lloyd George introduced his Budget proposals on April 29th, 1909. How startling they were is demonstrated by

the fact that it took twelve months to accustom the nation to them and to procure the final Royal assent. It is not within the province of this Journal to treat on politics, so that it is sufficient to point out their nature from a lawyer's point of view. The battle raged chiefly round the Land clauses which dealt with Increment, Valuation of Land for

purposes of taxation and Undeveloped Land Duty. Another innovation, not so startling, was the Reversion Duty payable by the lessor on the value of the benefit accruing to him upon the determination of a lease which exceeds twenty-one years. Another bone of contention was the Mineral Rights Duty of one shilling in the £ upon the rental value of the more valuable minerals. Increased death duties, the new super-tax, increased duties on liquor licences and stamps, all came in for a certain amount of criticism. It has therefore been advisable to arrange the books under the particular parts of the Budget with which they particularly deal.

Mr. Konstam is well qualified, by reason of his wide rating knowledge, to write upon land values and mineral rights. book gives an admirable dissection of the new duties imposed, in the Introduction. Increment Value Duty, Reversion Duty, Mineral Rights Duty, and Duties on Land Values, are all treated of in different chapters in a style which is lucid and profound. The Finance Act 1910 is given in extenso and is most carefully annotated; in fact, the whole style of the work is quite up to the standard one expects to find in the writings of this learned Author.

Running very much upon similar lines, the book brought out by Messrs. Cox-Sinclair and Hynes is a very excellent one and worthy of great praise. It is further amplified by a most useful historical Introduction in which is given a complete survey of the steps by which we have arrived at our present position.

Mr. Bateman Napier's name stands for solid and sterling work, and his numerous admirers will not be disappointed at the result achieved by him in the field of the new land taxes. In his Introduction he points to the unsatisfactory outcome of entrusting to a popular assembly the consideration of one of the most technical. subjects in the universe. The Introduction to the magnum opus is printed separately, and will, by reason of the popular language employed, undoubtedly appeal to a large circle of readers.

The treatise by Messrs. Devonshire and Samuel demonstrates a great grasp of the subject and the application of vast energy to unravel the tangled skein presented to them; their annotations are complete. A distinct novelty is presented in the form of a Table to illustrate certain examples given of the Increment Value Duty.

Sir Howard Elphinstone's comments on the Finance (1909-10) Act, printed as a supplement to his monumental works on precedents

in conveyancing, with special application thereto, will command immediate attention. His opinion, as to the stamping of an instrument made in pursuance of a contract made before the 30th April, 1910, which is to be found on page 37, although in conflict with that of the Commissioners, will no doubt carry great weight, and be the means of impelling those august persons towards reconsidering their views.

In Mr. Wylie's and in Mr. Moffet's books will be found information put in a popular form. The latter, by reason of his position in the estate and land agent's department of the L. & N. W. Railway Company, is well qualified to speak of the practical side of the question.

Messrs. Evans and Barton have a great asset in the shape of a special chapter on some of the problems of practical valuation likely to arise in the administration of the Act, which is written by Mr. H. J. Treadwell, F.S.I.

The Income Tax part of the Act is thoroughly analysed, and all the existing Income Tax Acts collected, together with the decisions thereunder, in the very excellent work, by Mr. Redman. The quality of this learned Author's efforts is testified to by the fact that his book has reached the eighth edition.

Mr. Berry brings a ripe experience to bear, gathered in the Inland Revenue Department of Somerset House, upon the task of compiling an Index of Income Tax Acts from the time of the Income Tax Act 1842 down to the Finance (1909-10) Act 1910.

Mr. Webster-Brown is another specialist from the Estate Duty Office of Somerset House, and he devotes himself to a sound book on Estate Duty and other death duties, with notes, rules, and a table of forms. The passing of the last Finance Act has rendered a second edition necessary by reason of the numerous innovations and alterations brought about. The same reason has called forth the issue of the third edition of Mr. Harman's book on the same and kindred subjects.

Mr. Aggs has written an exceedingly useful handbook on the whole Finance Act, one of a series entitled "Annotated Acts." A little work obviously intended for the "man in the street," the Author has prefaced the Act and annotations by an Introduction in which he gives a masterly survey of his subject.

In Mr. J. A. Lovat-Fraser's little work we have just such another handbook, arranged upon similar lines. The learned Author's remarks

upon the question of the Mining Rights Duty will be valuable, by reason of the experience gained by him of the subject upon the South Wales Circuit.

After reviewing a long list of books on a subject such as the last Finance Act, one is tempted to speculate whether so much complexity in our taxation is remedial. What is it that renders necessary such a flood of text-books? Is it that our land system is bad, or is it that our system of taxation is bad? It would be outside the purview of a review to speculate on two such subjects, but the writer cannot help thinking that the evil is at the root and not in the stem above ground. When will some strong man arise who will sweep away a system of land law mediæval, complicated and unwieldy, substituting in its place compulsory and universal registration of title, which system exists in almost all civilised parts of the world except in our own?

The New Law Regulating Assurance Companies. By J. V. VESEY FITZGERALD, K.C., and R. J. QUIN, LL.B. London: C. & E. Layton.

1910.

The Assurance Companies Act 1909. By M. H. TRUELOVE. London P. S. King & Son. 1910.

The Assurance Companies Act 1909 is not merely a consolidating statute. By the legislation of 1870, 1871 and 1872, regulations were imposed upon Life Assurance Companies in the transaction of their business; and for the better protection of their customers the obligation to deposit with the Board of Trade the sum of £20,000 was laid upon them. This obligation was in 1907 extended to employers' liability insurance companies. All these provisions have been repealed, and with modifications and additions, re-enacted in the new statute. The most important addition to the existing law is the extension of the Act to companies carrying on the business of fire insurance, accident insurance, and bond investment. By the Act of 1907 underwriters were required to deposit securities to meet liabilities on policies. Underwriters who undertake any of the above-mentioned classes of business are now subject to the provisions of the new Act. It will thus be seen how far-reaching the new statute is, bringing within its ambit an enormous mass of business. The learned Authors of the first book are content to annotate the Act, but they do this at considerably greater length than the learned Author of the second.

The latter, however, in the Appendix, sets out the text of the old Assurance Companies Acts, the Friendly Societies Acts, and the Industrial Assurance Companies Act 1896. The first-named Authors refer to far more decided cases than Mr. Truelove, but in both cases there are omissions. For instance, the latter omits to refer to In re Nelson & Co., Ltd. (24 T. L. R. 74 [1907]), and the former to Nelson & Co. v. Board of Trade (84 L. T. 565 [1901]).

Bombay in the Making. By P. B. M. MALABARI. T. Fisher Unwin.

1910.

London :

The justification of bringing this book (to which a Preface is supplied by H. E. Sir George Sydenham Clarke) to the notice of lawyers and jurists lies in the fact that it is really a history of the rise of judicial institutions in the Presidency. No adequate account of the tribunals which preceded in point of time the present High Court exists; and Mr. Malabari's official position as Deputy Registrar gives him peculiar facilities for qualifying to deal exhaustively with the subject. The labour expended in the volume before us was brought into play none too soon, for the Author found the ants and the damp at work, and the records crumbling before his eyes. Thoroughly imbued with the modern spirit of historical exhaustiveness, he has selected for study the sixty-five years from 1661 to 1726. He has rescued a wealth of valuable material from disappearance, and he has produced a book which any European historian might be well content to own. The real founder of judicial institutions at Bombay appears to have been the Hon. Gerald Angier, grandson and greatgrandson of distinguished lawyers, one of whom was Master of the Rolls in Ireland, temp. James I. Friction between judges and governors undid much of Angier's good work, and from 1680 to 1700 there was no Court of Judicature in Bombay at all. But by the close of Mr. Malabari's period, we find judicial institutions in good working order, and we take leave of Bombay on the eve of the erection of the Mayor's Court-an experiment which was destined to suffice her legal needs for seventy years, and until the era of Mackintosh. Those seventy years we trust Mr. Malabari will treat of in a future volume; for his lightness of touch, and the deftness with which he imparts freshness to the bygone pages of Court records, combine with an accuracy and sanity of judgment to render him an ideal chronicler. We may draw the learned reader's special attention to the chapter on "Landed Property in Early Bombay,"