that it was the universal opinion of the Bar that he should have led the cause."

In London Pitt was equally assiduous in his attention to his profession. Mr. Justice Rooke used to relate how Pitt had dangled several days with a junior brief, and a single guinea fee, waiting till a cause of no sort of importance should come on in the Court of Common Pleas. On another occasion, on a motion for a Habeas Corpus in the case of a man who was charged with murder, in the Court of King's Bench, Mr. Pitt made a speech which excited the admiration of the Bar, and drew down some words of praise from Lord Mansfield. He was retained as junior to Erskine in the case of Rex v. Bate Dudley. Dudley, who was proprietor of the Morning Post, was charged with publishing a libel, and Erskine obtained an acquittal against the summing up of Lord Mansfield. Brougham hints that Pitt was not impressed by his leader on this occasion.

It is evident that Pitt, as a young barrister, was forming decided opinions about those with whom he came into contact. He took a strong dislike to Mr. Justice Buller, an able, but domineering, and almost brutal judge. Lord Mansfield, when he retired from the post of Lord Chief Justice, tried to prevail on the Ministry to appoint Buller as his successor. "But Mr. Pitt," says Brougham, "while at the Bar, had seen things in that able and unscrupulous magistrate, which made him resolve that no such infliction should fall on the English Bench." The principal cause of offence in Buller was his conduct in a trial at Bodmin, affecting the political rights in one of the pocket boroughs of the Buller family. Buller, who had presided, had shown undue partiality for his own connections, and had disgusted the young barrister, who was quietly taking stock of the judge's behaviour. Thurlow pretended that it was he who had secured the appointment of Kenyon, and declared that he had "hesitated long between the corruption of Buller

and the intemperance of Kenyon." But it was Pitt, and not Thurlow, that had effectually prevented the appointment of Buller as Lord Chief Justice.

It

It was, in great measure, to the early friendship of Pitt that Richard Pepper Arden owed his great success. is related by James Grant, that Pitt and Arden became acquainted through the accidental circumstance of their occupying chambers on the same staircase in Lincoln's Inn. It was by Pitt's interest that Arden was created successively Solicitor-General and Attorney-General, and it was Pitt who made him Master of the Rolls in 1789, and secured his elevation to the Peerage as Lord Alvanley.

In 1782 Pitt's attention was turned for ever from the Bar by his appointment to the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is probable that if he had continued to practise, he would have become one of the ornaments of his profession. Lord Campbell said that he had heard much speculation as to the probable success of the younger Pitt, if he had remained at the Bar. "I think," said Lord Campbell, "that it must have been splendid; but, unless he had exhibited greater variety of manner, and a more familiar acquaintance with the common feelings of mankind, it never could have approached that of Lord Erskine." He goes on to add, with regard to Pitt's life-long rival, that Fox, in arguing questions of law at the trial of Hastings, excited the astonishment and admiration of the judges, and he expresses. the opinion that, in every branch of forensic practice, Fox would have been supreme.

Pitt became a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and his name crops up in the curious and rather interesting case of The Earl of Rosslyn and Another v. Jodrell, 1815, in Campbell's Reports. In that case, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, who had not paid his commons and other dues, was sued on the bond which he gave to the Society on his being called to the Bar. He objected to pay, because

he was dissatisfied with the manner in which benchers were elected, and with the management of the affairs of the Society. Scarlett, who appeared for the recalcitrant barrister, said that Mr. Jodrell, who had given much attention to the subject, found that the benchers, generally called "The Ancients of the House," were actually the senior members of the Society, venerable for their years and their learning; while the benchers had of late years been inexperienced young men, many of them unconnected with the law, who were preferred by political influence. This he considered such a change in the constitution of the council formed by the benchers, as to render their orders a nullity, and to dispense even with the payment of the ancient dues of the Society, which were now, he said, so liable to be abused. Sir William Garrow, the Attorney-General, in reply, observed that the Society had had the honour to have the late Mr. Pitt and Mr. Perceval as benchers, and that Lord Sidmouth, Mr. Vansittart, and several other eminent politicians were so then, but they had all been called to the bench on being appointed to the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, or some other high situation in the law.

J. A. LOVAT-Fraser.

V.-FOREIGN LIMITED COMPANIES OPERATING

THE

IN SPANISH-AMERICA.1

HE last occasion on which formal conclusions were adopted by the International Law Association was at the Congress which met at Berlin in the year 1905, when the draft International Code received your approbation. I may say, in passing, that Art. 8 does not offer

1 A Paper presented in Spanish by Mr. Wyndham A. Bewes, Barrister-at-law, at the International Law Association Conference at Madrid, October, 1913.

sufficient security to a foreign Government that a particular company or association has been validly incorporated with a lawful object in its country of origin when it treats the mere production of a certificate of a notary public as conclusive evidence that the company has been duly incorporated. At the present time those countries with which this paper is more immediately concerned require further evidence than that, viz.: the corroboration of their Consul-General sometimes fortified by the visto bueno of its diplomatic agent. In my view this further formality must still be regarded as likely to be demanded in any future international convention on the subject.

There has been much discussion among jurists as to the legal effect of the authorisation of a foreign company, or rather of its recognition by the State where it proposes to operate. According to the paper read by Señor Estanislao S. Zeballos, which appears in the Journal du Droit International Privé, Vol. XXXIII, the position contended for by the Argentine Government in the affair of the Bank of London and the River Plate in 1876, was that the local laws of the province of Santa Fé had given existence to the bank which was in fact a bank founded and operating in London. The Note to the British Government said, "Les personnes juridiques doivent exclusivement leur existence à la loi du pays qui les autorise et, par conséquent, elles ne sont ni nationales, ni étrangères."

I doubt very much whether this doctrine, which does not seem to have been controverted at the time by the British Government, would be supported by many States at the present date; and it may be mentioned that this argument was not necessary in order to substantiate the claim made by the Republic of Argentina that the bank was bound to conform to a law of the State of Santa Fé, which directed local paper obligations to be converted into gold obligations. It is well to remember that the above doctrine was

formerly supported by most of the leading jurists, but has been abandoned by the more recent jurists, although it is still sanctioned by some of the Codes of South America, such as Bolivia and Chile, which attribute this legal existence to the Decree of the Government authorising the respective companies. The Civil Code of the Republic of Mexico says (Art. 39), “No association or corporation possesses a juristic entity unless it is legally authorised or permitted," and apparently this article applies to foreign companies.

But in truth the company is already in existence in the form authorised by its State of origin, and what is done by the country where it desires to function, is to recognise that legal existence for the purposes and effects of the local jurisdiction and administration. The contrary is the case as regards National companies, which are constituted in all countries under the form of an inert entity, which only possesses actual life by virtue of authorisation, recognition, or licence of the executive. From this time they become juristic entities. On the other hand, foreign companies have been recognised by the fact of contracts being permitted by correspondence, by the provisions of international treaties and by the universal permission to litigate in the local Courts. It should be remembered that in the Republic of Argentina and most other States "treaties made with foreign Powers are the supreme law of the Nation" (Art. 31 of the Constitution).

The meaning of "Domicil."

Students of International law have ever to remember the distinction which exists between the two meanings in which the word "domicil" is used, a difference which is well defined by the Civil Code of the Republic of Chile, which says (Arts. 60 and 61), "Political domicil refers to the territory of the State in general. . . . . The constitution