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the whole of the plaintiff's claim, could not have done so without being himself guilty of a misdemeanor.

IN THE CASE of Ex parte Lynch, In re Lynch (24 W. R. 375, L. R. 2 Ch. D. 227), the Chief Judge held that, notwithstanding the provisions of the Infants' Relief Act, 1874 (37 & 38 Vict. c. 62), an infant debtor who trades may, after attaining his majority, be adjudicated a bankrupt in respect of a trade-debt contracted, and upon an act of bankruptcy committed, during his infancy. The ground of his decision was that the Infants' Relief Act had made no difference as regards the rule that an adjudication of bankruptcy against an infant who has held himself out as sui juris, and traded as such, would not be annulled. Of course, if the ground of this decision was correct, the fact that the infant in Ex parte Lynch had attained his majority before he was adjudicated bankrupt was immaterial, and in a case of Ex parte Jones, Re Jones, decided by the Chief Judge on Monday last, he held that, although the infant who has traded remains an infant at the date of the adjudication, the adjudication will not be annulled. But is the interpretation of the Infants' Relief Act adopted by the learned judge correct? As to this we confess we entertain considerable doubt. "The object of the Infants' Relief Act," said the learned judge, in Ex parte Lynch, "was to protect young persons, not from the consequences of trading, but from extravagant debts incurred for unnecessary articles, such as jewellery. It has no application to a case like the present." But in R. v. Wilson (L. R. 5 Q. B. D. 28) it was held by the Court for Crown Cases Reserved (including COCKBURN, C.J., and LINDLEY, J.) that the Infants' Relief Act protected an infant who had traded, and had been adjudicated bankrupt in respect of a trade debt, against a conviction under section 12 of the Debtor's Act, 1869, for quitting England with property with intent to defraud his creditors. The ground of that decision (in which, however, Ex parte Lynch was not cited) must have been that by reason of his infancy the proceedings in bankruptcy were void, and that he had not any creditors within section 12 of the Debtor's Act, 1869, amongst whom the property ought by law to have been divided.

SIR GABRIEL GOLDNEY'S MEASURE for the admission of clergymen to Parliament took the shape of a Bill for the repeal of 41 Geo. 3, c. 63 (generally known as "HORNE TOOKE's Act"), section 1 of which declared that 66 no person having been ordained to the office of priest or deacon, or being a minister of the Church of Scotland, is capable of being elected to serve in Parliament as a member of the House of Commons;" while by section 2 any such person sitting or voting as a member of the House was subjected to a penalty of £500 for every day on which he should do so, to be recovered by any person who should sue for the same. It is, however, very doubtful whether the repeal of this Act would be sufficient to open the House of Commons to a clergyman, since the parliamentary precedents on the subject, up to the year 1801, were most inconclusive. In 1553, the Rev. Dr. NOWELL, who had been elected a burgess for Loo, was declared by a Committee of the House to be unable to sit," being a prebendary of Westminster, and thereby having a voice in the Convocation House." In 1620, a clerk returned for Morpeth was similarly excluded by the Committee of Elections" because he had, or might have, a voice in the Convocation;" and in 1661 Sir JOSEPH CRADDOCK was declared by the same committee to be disabled from sitting in the House because he was in holy orders, there being in this case no reference to the contingency of his sitting in Convocation. On the other hand, it appears that Sir THOMAS HAXEY, clerk, sat in the House of Commons during the reign of Richard II.; while in 1785, EDWARD RUSHWORTH, clerk,

who had been elected for Newport, and had been petitioned against on the ground that he was a clerk in holy orders, was declared to have been duly elected. In this conflict of authorities the House refused to declare Mr. HORNE TOOKE to be ineligible, and the 41 Geo. 3, c. 63, was then introduced and carried by Mr. ADDINGTON. Roman Catholic clergymen are excluded from the House of Commons by section 9 of the Emancipation Act of 1829; but ministers of all other denominations are eligible. It will, of course, be remembered that, under the Clerical Disabilities Act, 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 91), ss. 3, 4, any minister of the Church of England may, by executing a deed of relinquishment, and inrolling the same in Chancery, and delivering a copy of it to the bishop of the diocese, be discharged from "all disabilities, disqualifications, restraints, and prohibitions" to which he would be subject as a minister of the Church of England. We believe that more than one member of the present House of Commons has availed himself of this Act.

LIABILITY OF CORPORATIONS FOR TORTS INVOLVING MALICE.

In the recent case of Edwards v. Midland Railway Company (L. R. 6 Q. B. D. 287), it was decided by Mr. Justice Fry, on further consideration, that an action for malicious prosecution will lie against a corporation aggregate, such as a railway company. It seems strange that this identical point should never have been decided before. The learned judge went through the authorities, and showed that other actions involving malice have been held to lie against companies or corporations, and so far his decision has the support of authority; but, with regard to this particular form of action, there seems to have been no actual decision. In Stevens v. Midland Counties Railway Company (10 Ex. 352), Baron Alderson held that in order to support such an action it must be shown that the defendant was actuated by a motive in his mind, whereas a corporation has no mind. The other two judges who were parties to the judgment decided in the company's favour on other grounds.

Mr. Justice Fry did not go very much into the reason of the thing apart from authority; but it seems to us that there is little doubt that his decision follows the current of recent authority, and is correct in principle, independently of precedent. The same difficulty has been raised in many cases in which it is now well established that an action will lie against a company. It is a proverbial saying, sometimes put in terms more forcible than elegant, that a company is not amenable to moral or physical arguments, having neither soul nor body. But the courts have increasingly tended to the conclusion that, inasmuch as a company has a purse, which for the practical purposes of litigation is the important matter, it may be treated as constructively having a soul or mind. Thus it seems now to be clear that an action will lie against a company for a fraudulent representation made by its agent within the scope of his authority. The same difficulty arises here as in the case of an action for malicious prosecution, because moral fraud is essential to this form of action, and however fraudulent directors may sometimes be, fraud cannot be predicated of the corporation itself. Similarly, in Whitfield v. South-Eastern Railway Company (E. B. & E. 122), Lord Campbell said that the ground on which it was contended that an action for a libel could not possibly be maintained against a corporation aggregate failed, and also that there might be great difficulty in saying that under certain circumstances express malice might not be imputed to, and proved against, a corporation. Certainly it seems to us that there is far greater difficulty with regard to libel than

malicious prosecution. Chief Justice Erle said in Green v. London General Omnibus Company (7 C. B. N. S. 290, 301), that the doctrine that a corporation, having no soul, cannot be actuated by a malicious intention, is more quaint than substantial. It seems, therefore,

that the view of Baron Alderson has not been received by other judges.

With regard to the principle of the thing, the difficulty is more formal than substantial. It may at first sight seem anomalous that in cases where a mental intention or motive is essential to the cause of action, the action should lie where the actual defendant had not, and could not have, any mental intention at all. But, in truth, it is clear that the question is not peculiar to corporations when the essence of it is apprehended. The difficulty arises from a fallacious mode of stating the question. Assuming that a mental intention is necessary to some causes of action, the question really is whether that mental intention must be the defendant's.

We appre

The corpo

hend that it need not. The true question involves the principles of the law of agency, or of master and servant, and has nothing to do with the law of corporations as distinguished from other persons. The same question in reality always arises where it is sought to make a principal or master responsible in this class of action for the acts of his agent or servant. ration is really only in the same position as the principal who had not the particular intention in question. It may be said that the individual could have had the intention, but the corporation could not, not having a mind. The distinction appears to us, for civil purposes, to be immaterial. It is clear, ex hypothesi, if the individual principal, or master is liable, it is not on the ground of his moral delinquency, for he has been guilty of none. If he is responsible, it is because his agent or servant, acting within the scope of his authority, has been guilty of moral delinquency. Why should not the same reasoning apply to a company? We know of no reason. All considerations of convenience and justice seem to point to a company's being as much responsible in such a case as an individual. The true solution of the question, whether in such cases a corporation ought to be made liable, seems to depend on the applicability, or otherwise, of the reasons for the liability of the principal for the acts of his agent, or the master for those of his servant. The liability of the principal for the acts of his agent in actions ex contractu seems to depend on very obvious grounds. It depends on the existence of actual authority, or on circumstances which estop the principal from deny ing the authority. The ground for the liability of a principal for the torts of his agent, or a master for those of his servant, is not quite so distinct or so easily expressed. But it seems to be just that he should be liable on grounds of this sort-viz., that if a person delegates, or procures the performance of, an act or series of acts for his own advantage, he should be responsible in respect of the conduct of the person performing the act or series of acts in obedience to his direction, so far as the action of such person is incidental to the employment. As to the limits of this rule, of course, great niceties arise. It is very difficult to say what is within the scope of the employment, as many cases in the books testify, but, putting aside the difficulty of application, if the rule be the true one, why should it not apply to a corporation or company as much as to a private individual?

With regard to the case of actions which involve malice, the difficulty must usually lie in showing that the action of the servant or agent came within the scope of his employment. The question as raised in Edwards v. Midland Railway Company did not present the difficulty that it conceivably might, for the jury found malice generally, and the questions of law reserved were only whether an action for malicious prosecution would lie against a corporation, and whether the employment of the detective who prosecuted was an act within the scope of the company's

incorporation, both of which questions were, we think, for the reasons we have given, easily answerable in the affirmative. But it seems to us that there are other questions which might possibly be involved; for instance, whether the malice which actually existed in the mind of the servant or agent was malice purely personal to himself and arising out of his personal relations, or was malice which, 80 to speak, arose out of, and was connected with, his representative capacity. We do not know whether this might or might not be material. But suppose a railway detective took advantage of his position to bring a groundless charge against, and prosecute, a man from some motive of malice purely personal to himself-as, for instance, because the party charged had been his successful rival in a love affair-would his malice in such a case be rightly held to be constructively the company's malice? We suggest this by way of illustration, and as opening up various nice questions, without professing to indicate a decided opinion on the question which arises. The malice here is clearly not the malice of the man qua company's servant, but his own private and personal malice. Possibly such nice points would not often arise in actual practice, or else it would be difficult often for a jury to say where the company's servant ended and the individual began. To judge from our experience of juries in similar matters, they would generally take care in all doubtful cases to prevent nice points of law arising by finding all questions of fact against the company.

THE IRISH LAND BILL.

III.

We have traced the history of the occupation of Irish land from a period anterior to the English invasion down to the latter part of the eighteenth century, and have seen that, notwithstanding great changes in his legal position, and several successive forfeitures of the ownership, the continuous occupation of the peasant remained, over a great part of the country, practically unaffected. The natural operation of economical causes would doubtless, however, have tended there, as elsewhere, as society became at once more settled and more complex, to reduce the relative positions of owner and occupier to the simple commercial relation of letting and hiring, had they not been neutralized by the effect of two events of importance.

The first of these was the interference by the English Parliament, and in the interest of English manufacturers only, with the Irish export trade, the effect of which was to render agriculture the only available resource of the great bulk of the popula tion, and thus to produce what would in these days be described as "inflation" in the possessory value of land. The other was the Declaration of Legislative Independence, whereby the Irish Parliament, in 1782, disclaimed the condition of vassalage adopted, for their own purposes, by the Parliament of the Pale in 1491, under which the Irish House of Commons had been, for nearly 300 years, little more than an office for registering the edicts of the English Privy Council. One of the first acts of the emancipated Parliament was to emancipate, in its turn, the constituencies, by extending the franchise (but not the right of being elected) to Roman Catholics, with an immediate, though altogether unintended, effect upon the tenure of the soil. For the county franchise was then-and thenceforward down to 1828 strictly limited to freeholders to the value of forty shillings and upwards, and, as we have seen, but a very small proportion of the population had any tenure whatever beyond a mere right of occupation: but the possession of a county seat became now, for the first time, an object of real ambition to the landed gentry of the kingdom, who speedily discovered that they could get

what was to them a more valuable return out of their estates by covering them with a dependent and submissive tenantry, the certainty of whose votes more than compensated for the precariousness of their rents, than from the system of extensive grazing farms which had been introduced in the earlier part of the century. And the old plan of giving leases for lives, which had been gradually dying out, afforded a means of effecting readily the double object, of making the tenant a freeholder in law, and keeping his actual right of occupancy as precarious as before. The result, acting on the natural bias of the people already pointed out, was to cover the country, particularly in its poorer districts, with a teeming population, nominally owners of freeholds (i.e., leases pur autre vie) of values kept as near the magic forty shillings as the power of sub-division could attain to, who were, under the most prosperous circumstances, barely able to maintain life on the lowest scale compatible with any settled existence at all, and who were, on the occurrence of the slightest misfortune (the acci dental death of a cow, or the failure of an oat crop), reduced to a condition of absolute pauperism, and dependent, not merely for continued occupation, but for the very means of subsistence, on the forbearance or liberality of the landlord. He, in his turn, considered himself repaid for rents in arrear, often remitted altogether, nay, even for occasional substantial assistance in food or money, by the unswerving fidelity with which he was served at the polls. The Union with Great Britain, which swept away two-thirds of the members of the Irish House of Commons, left the sixty-four county members intact, and thus rather increased than alleviated the state of things described. There were, we believe, many parts of the country where the average holding did not in the year 1820 exceed five acres (at an average rent of ten to fifteen shillings an acre), and we can speak from personal knowledge of a district in which the sub-division was carried further yet, and a whole country side was cut up into plots not really larger than good-sized potato-gardens. In this case, however, agriculture was only a part of the tenant's occupation, and the livelihood they could not have made as farmers they cked out as weavers.

The first shock to this system was given by the cele brated "Clare Election," when the tenantry of Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald and his friends, for the first time in the history of the island, voted against a deservedly-popular landlord, and in favour of a comparative stranger, on the ground of "public politics." The Emancipation Act of 1829, which immediately followed, disfranchised the forty-shillings freeholders, and substituted a £50 Occupation franchise (which has since been lowered to £12), and thenceforth the efforts of the landowners have been mainly directed to getting rid of the evil effects of the excessive sub-division which they had, until then, encouraged.

The

In the meantime, the "Customs of Ulster "-so much talked about, 80 little understood outside the limits of the province-had been growing up. population of that province were mainly the descendants of the settlers under James the First's “Plantation,” and, although comparatively few of them retained their original holdings, they had never ceased to feel themselves entitled to a more permanent interest in the soil than was recognized by the law. There was no way in which the landowners could more readily ingratiate themselves with the tenantry-and this was, as we have seen, an object of importance with themthan by permitting the transfer of this interest, which by-and-bye came to be generally recognized under the name of "goodwill." Moreover, it was soon perceived that this "goodwill" might be so used as to constitute a valuable additional security for the payment of rent, and it very soon became the practice on a very large number of estates to require all sales of the goodwill to be made "in the office," the money being paid to the agent, who deducted therefrom the arrears of rent before handing

the balance to the outgoing tenant. The decision of the court against the legal validity of the custom left the incoming tenant wholly at the mercy of the landlord, who might evict him at any time without permitting a sale of the goodwill, but, nevertheless, so firmly rooted was the custom, and so undoubting the trust of the people in the honour of the landowners, that we have frequently known the goodwill of a tenancy from year to year, comprising no legal right to anything beyond occupation at a full rent till the then next 1st of November, sold for a larger price than could have been got for the fee-simple of the farm.

When, by the operation of the Incumbered Estates Court (established by Lord John Russell's Government after, and in consequence of, the famine of 1846—7), a new race of owners was introduced, who knew nothing of the history of their estates, and had enjoyed none of the benefits, pecuniary or otherwise, which this system had secured to their predecessors in title, it was not long before some of them were found ready to insist upon the legal rights for which they had paid their money, and disinclined to listen to any counter-claims founded on considerations to which they were utter strangers. The action of these men, and notably of one, who had purchased in 1848 a considerable property in the most flourishing part of Ulster, near to the great estates of the Hills and Stewarts, where the customary rights of the tenants had always been looked upon as sacred-though not only perfectly legal, but the natural result of the conditions under which they had acquired their property-inevitably caused great dissatisfaction, not only to the tenants immediately affected, but to ali who felt that the insecure nature of their own tenure was, if not aggravated, at least exposed. It was a common saying at the time, "a single bad case takes away the confidence of a whole country side." Out of this feeling grew the "tenant-right agitation," organized by the late Mr. Sharman Crawford, which was indeed itself confined to Ulster, but which may be said to have been the nucleus of all the subsequent movement. The result of this movement, after several abortive attempts at settlement, was the Land Act of 1870, which though looked upon at the time as a daring invasion of the rights of property, it is now the fashion to call, from the tenants' point of view, a failure. So far, however, as Ulster is concerned, that Act, so far from being a failure, has been as successful as any measure, upon its lines, could possibly have been. By legalizing the Ulster customs, wherever they existed, and in all their varied forms, it secured to the tenantry absolutely, not only all they were entitled to, but all they ever wished to claim: and if the Act had stopped short at the end of the first section, it would have done for Ulster all that law could do in that direction. It did not, however, take long to show, first, that this legal recognition of the tenant's position entailed, even in Ulster, disadvantages which he had not foreseen; and, secondly, that in the rest of the island these disadvantages were produced in an intensified form, and without the countervailing benefit derived in the north from the legalization of

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CORRESPONDENCE.

PROSECUTIONS FOR PERJURY. [To the Editor of the Solicitors' Journal.] Sir,-It is surprising that attention has not been called to the astonishing nature of the proceedings which attend the prosecutions for perjury which so frequently follow some notorious case at the Central Criminal Court - or assizes.

The theory of the English law is that the prisoner's testimony concerning himself is not worthy of credit. At a trial, therefore, for a misdemeanor or felony, his mouth is shut and the prosecution witnesses can say what they please without danger of being contradicted by him. Well! owing to the promptness of a jury to believe a plausible story in the affirmative, while the negative (especially in the absence of knowledge before the trial as to what facts will be alleged) is so hard to establish, we will suppose a man unjustly convicted. An appeal is made to the Home Secretary to review the sentence,

and release a man from the horrors of perhaps undeserved

slavery in penal servitude.

What does the Home Secretary do? He cannot direct a new trial, and he declines to take on himself the reversal of the sentence in the conflict of evidence, but he offers, if the principal witnesses for the prosecution are convicted of perjury, to advise the Crown to grant a free pardon.

Another criminal trial is the result; but this time the situation of the parties is reversed. The convicted defendant of the last trial and his witnesses get up their case, they work up corroborative evidence, rake up everything that tells in their favour, and the principal witness-perhaps the prosecutor in the last trial-takes his seat in turn in the dock, and in turn finds out the difficulty on the spur of the moment in rebutting, by evidence, positive or negative, the plausible case made by the prisoner who is now prosecuting him. The jury perhaps see that there is, to say the least, a great likelihood that justice has miscarried, and that the previous prisoner is suffering an unjust sentence. Their feelings are worked on by the prisoner's counsel, and after an incisive summing up by the judge they convict the prosecutor or principal witness of perjury. He is sent off to serve his sentence, the former defendant is released. But the issue of the whole depends on this fact, that the former prisoner may have been unfairly convicted, while the witness against him may not have committed perjury at all. His story may have been true, or he may be bon a fide mistaken. These proceedings are a scandal to our

law.

Broughton-in-Furness, May 9.

J. R. HALL.

DORMANT FUNDS IN CHANCERY. [To the Editor of the Solicitors' Journal.] Sir,-A notice given by Mr. Findlater, M.P., for a return respecting unclaimed funds in the Court of Chancery (Ireland), embodies suggestions from time to time made by me for the improvement in form of the English list of dormant funds in chancery. It therefore seems a convenient opportunity to draw attention to the great delay in the issuing of the lists. By the rules under the Chancery Funds Act, 1872, it is provided that as soon as conveniently may be after the 1st of October, 1873, and after the same day in every succeeding third year, a list of funds undealt with for fifteen years or upwards shall be published in the London Gazette. As a matter of fact one list only has been issued since the passing of the Act of 1872-namely, on the 1st of March, 1877-so that triennial publication is out of the question. If the lists were issued promptly in an improved form, and published in newspapers likely to be seen by the parties interested, there is no reason why the great bulk of these

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CASES OF THE WEEK. BANKRUPTCY - EXAMINATION AS ΤΟ PROPERTY 1869, s. 96.-In a case of Ex parte Tatton, before the Court BANKRUPT-PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS-BANKRUPTCY ACT, compel production of documents by a person examined under of Appeal on the 5th inst., a question arose as to the right to section 96 of the Bankruptcy Act, 1869, respecting the property and dealings of a bankrupt. Section 96 provides that "the court may, on the application of the trustee, summon before it any person known or suspected to have in his possession any of the estate or effects belonging to the bankrupt, or supposed to be indebted to the bankrupt, or any person whom the court may deem capable of giving information respecting the bankrupt, his trade dealings or property, and the court may require any such person to produce any documents in his custody or power relating to the bankrupt, his dealings, or property." The wife of a bankrupt was, before her marriage, possessed of a policy of insurance on her own life, and had assigned it by way of mortgage. After the marriage the mortgage debt was paid off, and the mortgagee, by a deed to which both husband and wife were parties, assigned the policy to trustees on trust for the wife as part of her separate property. There had been no ante-nuptial agreement for a settlement. After the adjudication of bankruptcy, but before the bankrupt had obtained his discharge, the wife died. She had not made any disposition of the policy. The trustee in the bankruptcy summoned for examination, under section 96, a solicitor who had formerly acted for the wife. From his examination it appeared that the policy was in his possession; that after the assignment to the trustees the husband and wife bad joined in a deed by which it was mortgaged to another person; that by a subsequent deed this mortgage was transferred to the solicitor; and that by a third deed the wife had assigned the equity of redemption to him. The second and third deeds were executed after the bankruptcy. trustee's counsel asked for production of these three deeds; the solicitor objected to produce them. The registrar held that they must be produced. On the appeal it was objected that the deeds related to the separate estate of the wife. The court (JAMES, BAGGALLAY, and LUSH, L.JJ.) affirmed the decision of the registrar. JAMES, L.J., said that on the marriage the policy became the husband's property, subject to the wife's equity to a settlement; prima facie, therefore, it was his property. It was attempted to make it the wife's separate property by a post-nuptial deed. If it were the wife's separate property, it would pass to the husband as survivor, and would vest in his trustee. The trustee had, therefore, a right to see all the three deeds.-SOLICITORS, W. Tatton; Lumley & Lumley.

The

PROOF IN BANKRUPTCY-INTEREST SUBSEQUENT TO DATE OF ADJUDICATION-PROOF ON SEPARATE ESTATES OF TWO PARTNERS.-In a case of Ex parte Findlay, before the Court of Appeal on the 5th inst., a question arose as to the right of a creditor proving a debt in bankruptcy to interest on the debt subsequently to the date of the adjudication. A creditor, to whom two partners in trade owed a debt which they had contracted fraudulently, elected to prove against the separate estate of each partner. One of the separate estates paid dividends to the amount of fourteen shillings and threepence in the pound; the other paid dividends to the amount of twelve shillings and elevenpence in the pound. The creditor received ten shillings in the pound from each estate. The joint estate had paid only one shilling and sixpence in the pound. The creditor claimed to retain the benefit of his proofs against the separate estates until he had received interest on his debt up to the time of payment. It was contended on his behalf that each proof was a distinct security, and that the principle of the decisions of Lord Justice Giffard in the cases of the Warrant Finance Company (18 W. R. 102, 154, L. R. 5 Ch. 86, 88) applied. The creditor, it was contended, was entitled to the benefit of cach proof,

independently of the other, and might apply it as he pleased until his debt was fully paid with interest. The court JAMES, BAGGALLAY, and LUSH, L.JJ.) refused to admit the claim. JAMES, L. J., said that the rule in bankruptcy was clear. There was only one administration of joint and separate estate, though for convenience of administration the creditors were divided into two classes. When a creditor was competing with other creditors he could not prove for interest accrued due after the adjudication. Of course, if he held a security his right was different. Otherwise he could not have interest after the adjudication until all the other creditors, joint and separate, had been satisfied the principal of their debts.-SOLICITORS, Murray, Hutchins, & Stirling; Travers, Smith, & Braithwaite.

BANKRUPTCY PROTECTED TRANSACTION SECURED CREDITOR-GARNISHEE ORDER-BANKRUPTCY ACT, 1869, s. 94 (SUB-SECTION 3), s. 95 (SUB-SECTION 3).—In a case of Ex parte Pillers, before the Court of Appeal on the 5th inst., the question arose whether an attachment of a debt by a garnishee order is within the protection of either section 94 (sub-section 3) or section 95 (sub-section 3) of the Bankruptcy Act, 1869. Section 94 provides that nothing in the Act shall render invalid (inter alia) (3) "any contract or dealing with any bankrupt, made in good faith and for valuable consideration, before the date of the order of adjudication, by a person not having, at the time of making such contract or dealing, notice of any act of bankruptcy committed by the bankrupt, and available against him for adjudication." And section 95 provides that "the following transactions by and in relation to the property of a bankrupt shall be valid, notwithstanding any prior act of bankruptcy" (inter alia):-(3) "Any execution or attachment against the goods of any bankrupt, executed in good faith by seizure and sale before the date of the order of adjudication, if the person on whose account such execution or attachment was issued had not at the time of the same being executed by seizure and sale notice of any act of bankruptcy committed by the bankrupt and available against him for adjudication." The question arose in this way: on the 14th of August one Curtoys committed an act of bankruptcy. On the 30th of August a judgment was recovered against him for £167. On the 1st of September the judgment creditor issued a garnishee order nisi against one King, attaching all moneys due from him to Curtoys, to answer the judgment debt, and this order was served on King on the 2nd of September. The order was made absolute on the 15th of September. The judgment creditor had no notice of any act of bankruptcy committed by Curtoys. On the 25th of September Curtoys was adjudicated a bankrupt upon the act of bankruptcy of the 14th of August. The trustee in the bankruptcy alleged that the attachment was invalid as against him. The judge of the county court held that the obtaining the garnishee order was a "dealing with the bankrupt" within the meaning of sub-section 3 of section 94, and was protected by it, as the garnishor had had no notice of the act of bankruptcy. The Chief Judge held that the order was an attachment against the "goods" of the bankrupt within subsection 3 of section 95, and that, as the attached debts were not capable of being sold, and the judgment creditor had done all that he could to obtain possession of them, the attachment was within the protection and was valid as against the trustee. Upon the appeal reliance was placed upon Ex parte Joselyne (26 W. R. 645, L. R. 8 Ch. D. 327), in which James, L.J., said: "The property in the debt was transferred, and there was a complete and perfect security the moment the order of attachment was served." The court (JAMES, BAGGALLAY, and LUSH, L.JJ.) held that the attachment was not protected, and that it was invalid as against the trustee. JAMES, L.J., said that he could not agree either with the county court judge or with the Chief Judge. In order that the transaction might be protected it must be within the words or the reasonable meaning of sub-section 3 of section 95. The sub-section said that the attachment must have been perfected by seizure and sale before the adjudication. A debt attached under a garnishee order was not capable of being sold, and therefore such an attachment was not within the words. Without giving a final opinion, his lordship's strong impression was that the word "goods" meant goods and chattels" capable of being sold. At first he doubted whether there was anything of that kind capable of being

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"attached." But the words occurred in the Bankruptcy Act, 6 Geo. 4, c. 16, s. 81, and he thought the Legislature had then in view the process of equitable execution in the Court of Chancery, whereby goods sequestrated for nonpayment of money, ordered by a decree to be paid, could ultimately be sold and the proceeds of sale applied in payment of the money. There was, therefore when the words were first used in a Bankruptcy Act, something in the nature of an attachment on goods to which they could be applied, and this was sufficient to satisfy the words. But, if the words applied to the present case, the only equivalent to a sale of goods would be a realization of the attachment by actual payment of the attached debt to the garnishor. So long as it remained in fieri, so long as the debt was unrealized, an attachment could not be put higher than a mere seizure of goods by the sheriff, without any sale. BAGGALLAY, L.J., said that it was immaterial whether the debt was or was not to be considered as part of the goods of the bankrupt. If it was, the attachment in order to be protected must have been executed by seizure and sale; if it was not, it was not within the protection at all. But he agreed with James, L.J., that the debt was not "goods" of the bankrupt. At the time when the words were first used in a Bankruptcy Act there was no such thing in existence as an attachment of a debt by a garnishee order in existence. LUSH, L.J., agreed that it was unneces sary to decide whether sub-section 3 of section 95 did or did not apply to an attachment under a garnishee order. But he could not help thinking that, whatever might have been the meaning of the words in former Bankruptcy Acts, they must, in the present Act, be taken to include an attachment by garnishee order, a process which had been created by the Common Law Procedure Act and was well known at the time. Sub-section 2 of section 95 dealt with attachments against land of a bankrupt, and then sub-section 3 dealt with attachments against his "goods," not "goods and chattels." He thought it was intended to deal with all kinds of property which would pass to the trustee. The word "goods" might include debts, and he thought it must be taken as including them. Assuming that it did, the object of the provision was to protect creditors who, after the commission of a secret act of bankruptcy, had pursued their remedies against their debtor, but they were to be protected upon certain conditions. Goods, in the ordinary sense of the word, must have been, not only seized, but sold before the adjudication, and this showed that the intention was that, so long as the execution remained only a security, it should not be protected. There must have been an actual conversion of it into money. What was the equivalent in the case of an attachment by a garnishee order? The security must have been realized before there could be any protection, and the attachment could only be realized by obtaining payment of the debtfrom the garnishee, either voluntarily or by means of an execution upon his goods. Till that had been done there was to be no protection. The words "seizure and sale' had no application to such an attachment, but they showed what was the meaning of the Legislature clearly enough to enable the court to apply the principle. There must have been an actual receipt of the attached debt by the garnishor, and till then the garnishee order was only a security, and there was no protection. JAMES, L.J., said that, if the case should ever arise of an actual receipt of the attached debt by the garnishor before the adjudication, it was entirely unprejudiced by the present decision. Leave to appeal to the House of Lords was asked for, but was refused.-SOLICITORS, Whitakers & Woolbert; B. H. Van

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PRACTICE-COSTS-THIRD-PARTY NOTICE - ORD. [16, RR. 17, 21.-In a case of Witham v. Vane, before the Court of Appeal on the 9th inst., a question arose as to the payment of the costs of some third and fourth parties. The original defendants had served a third-party notice, in pursuance of an order giving them liberty so to do, upon some persons from whom they claimed an indemnity in case of relief being given to the plaintiffs, and the third parties in the same way served a notice on some fourth parties against whom they claimed a similar indemnity. At the trial Fry, J., held that the plaintiffs were entitled to only a small part of the relief which they claimed, and he ordered them to pay the costs of the third and fourth parties (24 SOLICITORS' JOURNAL, 612). The Court of Appeal (JAMES, BAGGALLAY and LUSH, L.JJ.) held that the plaintiffs were not entitled

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