IN LIGHTER VEIN. Il me faut d'un et d'autre pain: -La Fontaine, Contes. PARTICULAR ABOUT HIS READING.-In the Exchequer Court of Canada some years ago a case was tried in which the Crown sought to recover back certain Fishing Bounty money alleged to have been improperly paid to the defendant. It seems that the bounty was due to one Jonathan P. while John P. had received it. The naïve defence relied on at the trial was that the defendant's mother-tongue was Gaelic and that his knowledge of English was indifferent-consequently, as "Ian" in the former language stood as well for Jonathan as for John, the defendant had innocently taken the money. That being so, and in view of the fact that he was poor, he ought not to be asked to repay the money, and at the worst should not be mulcted in costs. To establish his case on this linguistic issue defendant's counsel called a local school-teacher and, proffering him a Gaelic translation of King James' Bible, asked the witness to point out to the Court where "Ian" was used in the Old Testament to designate "Jonathan " and where in the New Testament it was employed to signify "John." Now it happened that the witness was a pious and straight-laced Roman Catholic. Spurning the heretical scriptures as he would an infidel pamphlet by Bob Ingersoll, or a yellow novel, he turned magnificently to the presiding judge and said: My lord, I nefer reads them books, and I canna speak o' their insides"! The discomfited counsel for the defence a staunch Protestant-sat down abruptly, and the laughter in the court-room had to be suppressed by the sheriff. "LORD KEEPER DEFINED.-Voltaire gave credence to the following silly yarn in his Dictionnaire philosophique: “Il est public en Angleterre, et on voudroit le nier en vain, que le Chancellier Cowper épousa deux femmes, qui védurent ensemble dans sa maison avec une concorde singulière qui fit honneur à tous trois. Plusieurs curieux ont encore le petit livre que ce Chancellier composa en faveur de la Polygamie." Lord Campbell, in his Lives of the Chancellors points out that this choice bit of fiction originated with the notorious Mrs. Manley who, out of sheer political spite, in the New Atlantis, using fictitious names for the purpose, gave a detailed and inflammatory account of an alleged guilty union between Lord Cowper and a young lady-supposed to have been his ward. It was also stated that he had persuaded her of the lawfulness of a plurality of wivesand, to cap it all, it was asserted that the Chancellor's brother, disguised as a priest, had performed a mock ceremony of marriage between them. This outrageous libel ought to have disclosed its character at once to so alert a mind as Voltaire's; but it seems that he was more than pleased to repeat it in the place quoted, and to refer to it in another of his writings, where he added that the reason why the custodian of the Great Seal of England was called "Lord Keeper" was because he could keep as many wives as he wished! HOW ABOUT TO-DAY?-Erasmus says somewhere-probably not in his delightful Encomium Moria, where he satirizes the profession as a whole that the English lawyers of his day were the most learned of all men possessing the greatest learningdoctissimum genus doctissimorum hominum. We should like to think that the English Bar in our own times maintains this high tradition. But in any event lawyers throughout the Englishspeaking world should find in this declaration of the great sixteenth century humanist a call to refresh themselves every day and in every way at the Pierian spring and so become better and better. JUDGE ASKING LEADING QUESTIONS.-In one of Lord Ellenborough's speeches in 1813, when answering criticisms on the procedure of a Commission enquiring into charges against the Princess of Wales, he said: Folly, my Lords, has said that in examining the witnesses we put leading questions. The accusation is ridiculous; it is almost too absurd to deserve notice. In the first place, admitting the fact, can it be objected to a Judge that he put leading questions? . . . I have always understood, after some little experience, that the meaning of a leading question was this, and this only: That the Judge restrains an advocate who produces a witness on one particular side of the question, and who may be supposed to have a leaning to that side of the question from putting such interrogations as may operate as an instruction to that witness how he is to reply to favour the party for whom he is adduced. The counsel on the other side, however, may put what questions he pleases, and frame them as best suits his purpose, because then the rule is changed; for there is no danger that the witness will be too complying. But even in a case where evidence is brought forward to support a particular fact, if the witness is obviously adverse to the party calling him, then again the rule does not prevail, and the most leading interrogatories are allowed. But to say that the Judge on the bench may not put what questions and in what form he pleases can only originate in that dullness and stupidity which is the curse of the age." RESTITUTIO IN INTEGRUM.- Lord Dunedin in Admiralty Commissioners v. S.S. Valeria, (1922) 2 A.C. 242 begins his judgment thus: "I agree with the Lords Justices in the Court of Appeal but I cannot refrain from a slight criticism upon the use of the phrase 'restitutio in integrum.' Restitutio in integrum is a phrase which is properly applied when you wish to express the condition which is imposed upon a person seeking to rescind a contract. I do not think it can be properly applied to questions of tort; and the illustration I give is a simple one. If by somebody's fault I lose my leg and am paid damages, can anyone in his senses say I have had restitutio in integrum?" Lord Macnaghten, in Keighley, Maxted & Co. v. Durant (1901) A.C. 240 at 247: gives a very sprightly description of reporting in 1850: He said: "My Lords, I have nothing more to add on the question of principle. But I should like to say a word or two about the case of Bird v. Brown (1850) 4 Ex. 786, on which Collins L.J. seems to place his chief reliance. The case is instructive, I think, and useful, because it tends to shake one's confidence in the infallibility of reports, which always seem to carry the more weight the less opportunity there is of testing their accuracy. Why should an obscure report be taken for gospel merely because it is old? Bird v. Brown (1850) 4 Ex. 786, was heard by four judges. Only one judgment was given. The Exchequer Reports attribute the judgment to Rolfe, B. The Law Journal ascribes it to Parke, B. The Jurist puts it in the mouth of Pollock, C.B. No one gives it to the fourth judge; but then there were only three sets of reports current at the time. The Weekly Reporter did not begin till later." 66 LORDS OF THE COUNCIL.-Lord Justice Scutton, speaking at University College recently, said one of the threads, and a very odd one which held the different units of the Empire together was the judicial committee of the Privy Council. "If you go into a slummy little street off Whitehall," he proceeded, “ you will find an extremely obscure door. You will then go upstairs into not a very clean-looking room, where you will find a horse-shoe table, and four or five sometimes rather sleepy old gentlemen sitting round it, being addressed by counsel. (Laughter.) But if you sit and listen you will be amazed at the pageant that passes through that room. Indian communities come to ask the court to decide whether a certain god has a right to pass through the street of a certain Indian town with elephants or not. (Laughter.) "There comes sometimes the commonwealth of Australia for the settlement of disputes between the states of Australia and the commonwealth as the exact limitations of the jurisdiction of each. There comes very frequently the Dominion of Canada and there comes representatives from the Mauritius, Trinidad, the Cape, and every colony brings the oddest questions to be decided by that perfectly impartial and trusted tribunal. "The result is that the Privy Council is known in the most obscure parts of the Empire, although the people do not know what it is. (Laughter.) There is a story that in one of the most obscure parts of India there was found an altar with worship going on. The traveller asked the people whom they were worshipping and they answered: "We do not know, but it is the great god, Privy Council.'" (Laughter.) In the case of Rowland v. The Air Council (1923) 39 T. L. R. 228, Russell, J., in the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice in England, deals with the question whether the defendants were liable upon a contract originally entered into by the Secretary of State for War. The facts disclosed that in July, 1915, the Secretary of State for War made a contract with one Edwards whereby the War Office would be supplied by Edwards with an aeroplane designed by an engineer named Kennedy, according to specifications. Kennedy's design in question included a novel feature in aeroplane construction, i.e. a tail-gun pit with accommodation for guns and gunners. It also had engines mounted on the wings. In July, 1916, the Director-General of Military Aeronautics transferred the benefit of the contract to Kennedy, who agreed to carry out the work with such variations as might be ordered from time to time. The plaintiff alleged that it was an implied term of the contract that the specifications and designs for Kennedy's aeroplanes were not to be disclosed to rival designers of aeroplanes, and were to be used only by the Directorate of Military Aeronautics, the Admiralty, and the Air Board. In the autumn of 1917 the Air Board lent their designing and technical staff to Messrs. Handley Page, Limited, and, as the plaintiff alleged, disclosed to that firm Kennedy's confidential reports, and the designs and draw C.B.R.-VOL. I.-19 |