A Hand-book on the Law of Marriage and Divorce.--Reports of Cases in the Court of Probate, and in the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes.- The Practice of the Court of Probate in Common Form Business, &c.—The Universal Review of Politics, Literature, and Social Science.-1. A Handy Book on the Law of Bills, Cheques, Notes, and I. O. U.s.-2. A Handy Book on the Law of Private Trading, Partnership ........ AMERICAN LAW LITERATURE:- A Practical Treatise Law of Railways.-A Treatise on the Construction of the Statute of Frauds, as in Force in England and the United States. Commentaries on the Law of Marriage and Divorce, and Evidence on Matrimonial Suits.-A Treatise on the Law of Attachment in the United States.-State of New York: First Report of the Com- missioners of the Code ....... COURTS OF REQUESTS IN CEYLON :- A Practical Treatise on their Construction and Procedure, &c. Recueil Général de Traités, Conventions, et autres Transactions remarquables, servant à la connaissance des Relations LONDON AND NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY Lord St. Leonards' Handy-Book.—Stuart's Reports in the Vice-Admiralty Court for Lower Canada. --Sharkey's Hand-book of Election Committees.--Dr. Seymour on Private Lunatic Asylums.-Claims of Ragged Schools, by Mary Carpenter.—The Universal Review for July - Meekins' Colonial Representation in Parliament.-Crabb's Privileges of Parliament.—The Tenure of Real Property in the Island of Guernsey.—Costs in the Probate Court.-Shakespeare in the Queen's Bench.—Mr. Locke King's Intestacy Bill. The Library of the Middle Temple.—Principles and Law of Banking.-Judi- cial Anticipation.—The Failure and Fate of the Statute Law Commission._Taylor on Poisons.—The Divorce Court.-Bank- ruptcy Law Reform.-Lord Murray.—Recent Attacks on Titles to Real Property.-Conservative Landed Estates Bills.—Leading THE Law Magazine and Law Review: OR, QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE. No. XIII. ART. I.- A Practical Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usages of Parliament. By THOMAS ERSKINE MAY, Esq. Fourth Edition. London: Butterworths, 1859. HE High Court of Parliament hath its own peculiar law the lex et consuetudo parliamenti—as we are told by one of the highest authorities on English jurisprudence. The lex et consuetudo is part of the unwritten law of the land, to “be collected out of the Rolls of Parliament and other records, and by precedents and continued experience.” Now, a maxim of common law is proved by shewing “ that it hath always been the custom to observe it," and the decisions of courts of justice are “the evidence of what is common law." Hence the constant declaration, by the High Court of Parliament, of a privilege belonging thereto, is evidence of its existence. Notwithstanding that such constitutional doctrines as the above occur in the early reading of the student of Blackstone, and are indeed very elementary in their nature; nevertheless, questions as to the privileges of Parliament have been the cause of much difficulty and dispute, nay, of no little danger, and they may yet, peradventure, be productive of VOL. VII. NO. XIII. B much more. The power of commitment being the natural and unquestioned support of parliamentary privilege, the aid and protection of an ordinary court of law are as naturally invoked by the person deprived of liberty at the hands of parliament; and thus collision between the august bodies is risked. In the chapter on the Jurisdiction of Courts of Law in matters of privilege, at the close of his first book, Mr. May has some sensible remarks upon the unsatisfactory relations produced through the assertion of its privileges by parliament on the one hand, and the exercise of their jurisdiction by the ordinary courts of law on the other : “It is to be hoped,” says he, “ that further contests may be very remote; but it must be acknowledged that the present position of privilege is, in the highest degree, unsatisfactory. Assertions of privilege are made in parliament and denied in the courts; the officers who execute the orders of parliament are liable to vexatious actions; and, if verdicts are obtained against them, the damages and costs are paid by the Treasury. The parties who bring such actions, instead of being prevented from proceeding with them by some legal process acknowledged by the courts, can only be coerced by an unpopular exercise of privilege, which does not stay the actions. If parliament were to act strictly upon its own declarations, it would be forced to commit, not only the parties, but their counsel and their attorneys, the judges, and the sheriffs; and so great would be the injustice of punishing the public officers of justice for administering the law according to their consciences and oaths, that parliament would shrink from so violent an exertion of privilege. And again the intermediate course adopted in the case of Stockdale v. Hansard, of coercing the sheriff for executing the judgment of the court, and allowing the judges who gave the obnoxious judgment to pass without censure, is inconsistent in principle, and betrays hesitation on the part of the House, distrust of its own authority, or fear of public opinion. “A remedy has already been applied to actions connected with the printing of parliamentary papers; and a well-considered |