last month or last year-decided it in such a way, while Judge Jones last week decided it in quite an opposite sense.

Lest it be thought that I am speaking of non-realities, or at least exaggerating the truth, I will give one instance (though I am convinced a dozen such cases will readily suggest themselves to any practitioner of experience), the question of venue on a promissory note, made in one district and payable in another made we will say in the country and payable in Montreal. Now, this question alone is a question of vast practical importance to the commercial community in this city, who have notes and bills of this kind coming due every day. We will take a case of this kind.

some of the judges "hold" this and others ministrators of the country, to settle questions "hold" that; that Judge Smith some time ago-like this after they have arisen half a dozen times we will say, and a fair opportunity been afforded of doing so. One reason why they do not appears to lie in the unscientific way a great many of the Judges of our Courts have in dealing with the various questions of law and practice which come before them for their decision, treating every question on its own individual merits, without consideration of others of a similar character, and without aiming to establish the principle which regulates the whole; just as though a naturalist were to attempt to define the nature and characteristics of an entire genus from the consideration of a single specimen. The office of the judiciary appears to me to consist as much in building up the law as in administering it; in supplying what is lacking in it, as well as in applying that which it already possesses a part of their functions which the Bench here in a great measure appears to overlook. The Roman Prætor, as we know, announced, on his accession to office, the rules and principles which he intended to administer during the term for which he was appointed, and these being added to and adopted by his successors, came at last to form a body of law fixed and certain which is to-day a most important element in the corpus juris.

A merchant has a note which he is unable to collect himself, and which he feels compelled, in order to secure himself, "to hand to his lawyer for collection." But in the place where the note was made he has no legal agent, knows no one to whom he can entrust it. It may be that the maker is fortunate enough to live in a place where there are no lawyers, and indeed, for many reasons the (only satisfactory course may be to sue on it here.

It is payable in Montreal, and reason and common sense would suggest that there is the place where the right of action on it arises. And, besides, it was decided in such a case by Judge Smith or Judge Jones, at such a time, that it might be so proceeded on, and he brings action here accordingly.

The action is returned, the defendant appears and files an exception to the venue, the case is fixed for hearing, all the costs of a case on the merits are incurred, with the exception of those occasioned by the adduction of evidence, the question is taken en délibéré, and after some days, it may be some weeks, by which time the plaintiff is pretty sick of the whole thing, the judge with many learned arguments and with that comforting reservation sauf à se pourvoir, dismisses the action with costs.

Can any good and sufficient reason be given for this? There may be, but I must confess that in my ignorance I cannot imagine what it | is. It seems to me that nothing would be easier than for the Judges, who should be and are the real law-makers as well as the law ad

We noticed in a recent issue the case of Wyatt v. Senecal, in which the rights of railway bondholders, with respect to the removal of rolling stock from the road, were in question. In the case of The County of Drummond v. The South Eastern Railway Company, decided recently by Judge Dunkin, another point of railway law of considerable importance was discussed. Part of the South Eastern Railway having been seized under execution of a judgment in the ordinary course, the question came up, whether a railway, or part of a railway, held by an incorporated company could be seized, and sold at Sheriff's sale, like an ordinary property. The Court, in an elaborate judgment, a short report of which appears in the present issue, decided that such seizure was not permitted by the law, and that it was not in the interest of creditors themselves to possess the right sought to be exercised. The Legislature might do something to amend the existing law, but his Honor intimated that caution was necessary.

We

quote in this connection the concluding remarks
of the learned Judge :-" It may be objected
in effect it was so at the argument that under
the view here taken the active means of re-
course of mortgage bondholders are less than
they may probably have been led to fancy them,
perhaps than they had some ground for think-
ing them, perhaps even than they ought to be.

But with this a Court of law has no concern.
Possibly enough, the law might have been put
into better form, or yet may be. A Court can
deal with it only as it is. At present anything
in the nature of what was done in the Carillon

of a corporate body duly organized to hold, and bound to work, each as a public institution. And whenever attempt so to legislate shall here be made, it is obvious to remark, that the fact of our railway system falling partly under Dominion and partly under Provincial control, is one suggestive of only so much the more of

caution in this behalf."

INDICTMENTS FOR LIBEL.

The prosecution in the Bradlaugh-Besant case in England, for publishing an obscene book, has failed before the Court of Appeal on a technical difficulty. The defendants were tried before the Court of Queen's Bench on

indictment for unlawfully publishing an obscene book called "Fruits of Philosophy." Among the objections taken by the defendants at the trial was one that the indictment was

defective, because it did not set forth the book or any passage thereof. The motion to quash the indictment on this ground was, however, overruled by the Court, reference being made to a case decided in the United States, Commonwealth v. Holmes, 17 Mass. 336, in which Parker, C. J., said: "It can never be required that an obscene book should be displayed upon the records of a Court, for this would be to require

that the public itself should give permanency to indecency." The reasons given by the Court of Queen's Bench for overruling the motion to quash were that setting out the whole book would be inconvenient, that it would be more reasonable that the objection should be taken by demurrer before the trial, and that the publication was a public nuisance. The Court of Appeal considered, however, that it would hardly ever be necessary to set forth a whole book in the indictment, and as to the objection against putting obscenity on the record, the Court very properly pointed out that the same and Grenville Railway matter can be done here reasoning would apply to other cases. It seems (even though by consent of parties) only sub-perfectly clear that indictments must be framed ject to revision, as each case presents itself, by the legislative power. It may well be a far less evil to leave things even in that state than to subject railways, to such end, to any judicial process not thoroughly hedged round with all needed safeguards, and this not merely with a view to protection of the various overt interests more immediately involved, but also to the requisite continuance (after sale, as before)

with sufficient precision to enable the accused to see what is charged against him, even though in so doing it may be necessary to employ language which offends the ear.

PUBLICATION OF LIBEL.

Mr. Justice McCord has given a decision at Quebec in the case of Irvine v. Duvernay et al.,

reported on another page, which threatens to augment the difficulties, already somewhat formidable, that surround newspaper publishers. The Judge holds in effect that the publisher of a newspaper may, in an action for libel, be summoned in any district where a copy of the paper containing the alleged libel circulates. Thus, publishers in Montreal may be called to defend themselves in Gaspe, provided a copy is proved to have been sold in that district, or to have been received by a subscriber therein. So, we presume, the publisher of a journal, the office of publication of which is in Ontario, Manitoba or British Columbia, may be sued in any district of the Province of Quebec to which a copy of the journal may happen to find its way.

THE PARLIAMENTS OF FRANCE.

(Concluded from page 126.)

dignity and emolument, but was of no greater weight in the decisions of the court.

Early regulations ordinarily present many of the features of paternal government. The faults and duties of judges were sharply looked to in the earlier days of Parliament. The ordinance of 1318 forbids the members of Parliament eating or drinking with parties who had suits before them. They were furthermore enjoined to attend the sessions, and not to leave their seats more than once in the morning. "It is a great disgrace," says the ordinance, "that · while the court is in session, its members should be walking and frolicking about the halls of the palace." Age, weight, and gout, in our days, probably exert a more efficacious restraint in this respect than the admonitions of kings on beardless judges.

Despite strict instructions, perfect attention was not obtained. President de Harley remarked

The number of judges necessary to pronounce once, that, if the gentlemen of the court who

a sentence varied in the different courts. In
criminal cases, a majority of two was required to
convict; in civil suits, a majority of one or two
was required. The vote of every member of
Parliament was of equal weight. The coun-
sellors, as
their name implies, had been
originally advisers of the court, when it was
composed of barons or officers of State not
versed in legal lore. By the gradual process
often seen, the adviser had acquired the
nominal as well as the actual authority. The
Parliament of Saint Louis seems to have con-

sisted of twenty-four members, three great
barons, three bishops, and eighteen knights,
with whom were associated thirty-seven clerks,
lay or religious, to draw up their decrees. The
peers of France preferred fighting for the Holy
Land to hearing long speaking claimants and
hair-splitting advocates. It was not pleasant
for a great baron, longing for a deer-hunt or an
opportunity to break spears in a tournament, to
listen to some wearisome trial, only finally to
make himself the bewildered mouthpiece of
some black-gowned student of Bologna, who
did not know the first rules of the noble science
of venery, who was ignorant alike of the
joyous art of the troubadour and of the weight
of a coat of mail. The baron went slaying the
Saracen, and the clerks became actual members
of the great court of Parliament. The office of
president was superior to that of counsellor in

talked would make no more noise than those who slept, it would be a great favor to those who listened. In 1681, the Chancellor Letellier informs some of the judges that the king has observed that they go to the palace with cravats, grey clothes, and with canes in their hands; and he directs them to assume a more dignified toilet. The procureur général of the Parliament of Rouen-an officer of enormous authority, and having a certain advisory power with the court-informs the judges that, although the gown does not make the monk, still judges ought not to clip their hair and wear beards. In 1347, the dauphin Charles forbid all magistrates having anything to do with commerce; and he also rates them for their idleness, and for the amount of time that they waste at their dinners. The judges of the present day may dine unreproved; but, if the statement be cor

rect that advocates in France have been forbidden to plead with mustaches, the tendencies of the French mind seem unchanged..

The sessions of the court were held at early hours. The great chamber met on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, at six in the morning, and continued until ten. During Lent, they sat an hour longer, for convenience of attending the sermon. From six to seven reports were made. The argument of cases began at seven, and continued until the judges adjourned for refreshments. At half-past eight, they met again

tering of ordinances with the Parliament was the continuance of this ancient practice. The custom had a natural origin. There was no other means of publishing the royal will to the com

and sat until ten. After ten, the chamber met as might be required, to hear reports, for consultation, and for other purposes. On Wednesdays and Saturdays the great chamber sat with closed doors, to consider matters of state, the enregis-munity. The fittest way to inform all of the tering of decrees, and to hear parties opposing marriages. There were afternoon sessions Tuesdays and Saturdays. At the morning sessions, the presidents, from All Saints' Day to the Annunciation of the Virgin, sat in an ermine robe and a cap. The rest of the year they were arrayed in a scarlet robe. In the afternoon meetings, all were arrayed in black gowns.

One would have supposed that the early hours, which must have made miserable the lives of our ancestors, would have been changed by the eighteenth century. Still, in the great case of the diamond necklace, in 1786, the court met at a quarter past six. One hundred and eightyseven members of Parliament, for nine months, listened to that famous trial, which excited an interest unequalled by any case not political in its nature which Europe has seen.

The fate of that glittering ornament, valued at half a million, which was made for a king's mistress, distracted all Europe, helped the downfall of the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, and furnished the last important subject for the investigation of the great court, which for five hundred years had administered the laws and influenced the destinies of France.

contents of the king's edicts was to have them solemnly enrolled in the records of the court for the district. It seems to have been conceded, when the uncertain forms of government had become fixed, that a royal edict or ordinance had no force or validity until it had been registered by the local court or Parliament. Registry was required, therefore, from each of the Parliaments of France. But here, as so often in French history, the Revolutions and changes of Paris were those of the entire kingdom.

The local courts rarely did aught but follow in the footsteps of the Parliament of Paris; and the history of the struggles of the judiciary for power are to be found almost exclusively in the annals of that body.

It was an easy and a natural step from the necessity of registration, for Parliament to claim the power of deciding whether that registration should be allowed. The popes, who had the right of crowning the emperor of the holy Roman empire, soon insisted that, as the coronation was necessary before the title could be assumed, such a right involved the power of deciding whether that great dignity would be worthily bestowed. The possessor of power that must be invoked soon claims a discretion in its exercise.

There can be no doubt that the power of registration in Parliament was originally only clerical. The king made the decree; the court published it to the world, and enrolled it on its registers as a part of the law it was to administer. The enlargement of this authority was, however, a healthful change. Many an institution most valuable to freedom has sprung from the dead husk of some worthless form.

We have yet to sketch the political rôle of the French courts. It was one which might well have given the Parliament of Paris a power equal to that of its great namesake of England. No other body in France had any control upon the monarchy. The States-General failed, for reasons which cannot be traced here, to become operative in the national history. The French monarchy tended to become absolute. A custom which originally was merely a form, by one of those changes which often occur in political The power of registration or rejection of history, seemed destined to exercise a powerful royal decrees possessed by a body better fitted control upon the unlimited authority of the for the office might have made France a constiking. As far back as 803, under Karl, we find tutional monarchy. But the long struggles of the capitularies read and published in a public the French judiciary with the king did not plaid in Paris before the échevins. Obedience to bring forth the fruits that might have been them was promised, and they were signed by hoped for. The power of the Parliament to the échevins, bishops, abbés, and counts, with refuse registration of edicts, unless supported their own hands. The reading and adoption of by sufficient moral and popular pressure to these royal edicts seem to have been regarded as compel acquiescence, was strangely restricted. necessary to make them effective. The enregis- | If the Parliament refused to register an edict,

The remonstrances of the court against royal edicts and its demand for Mazarin's dismissal led to open hostilities. During the continuance of the first war of the Fronde, the Parliament Many other ordinances of the government of Paris was a legislative body. The great also incurred their opposition. But it is doubt- nobles, who had a right to a seat in it, exercised ful if a legislative body, solely composed of their prerogative, and took part in its deliberajurists, will ever prove satisfactory in its work- tions. De Retz became a member, and largely ings. The conservatism which renders lawyers influenced its action by his wily declamation a valuable portion of the community, does not and subtle policy. The famous wits and fit them to constitute the governing class. beauties who figured in that struggle, centered However adapted to guard the heritage of the their attention upon its deliberations. Mme. past, they have shown little tendency to deve- | de Longueville, the most fascinating of French