England in the great purple velvet, gold-embroidered bag, adorned with the arms of England.-It might be mentioned that the State provides a new bag for the Seal every year at a cost of $500.

Although there is no law forbidding a Lord High Chancellor from leaving the Kingdom, still his absence is a difficult thing to bridge over. In order to come to America, Lord Haldane required the special permission of the King and the Prime Minister. Meantime the Seal has to be specially guarded."

A Canadian editorial writer (in the Peterborough Examiner) greeted His Lordship on the same visit, as follows:

"He is the first occupier of the office in history to put the seal in cold storage and hie himself out of the limits.

"Haldane, the great lawyer, the great statesman, the scholar and the writer of profound learning. is still in the prime of life. Fiftyseven years of age, a man of striking personality, of agreeable address and a happy example of adaptability and humor. Our own and the United States statesmen will be able to see at a short range a British statesman embodying the best traditions of his class, and be able to institute comparisons if not draw contrasts."

The picture of the meeting at Montreal is ineffaceable from my own memory. The hall packed with lawyers. Three very striking personalities, Chief Justice White of the United States Supreme Court, ex-President Taft, Judge White's successor, and the Lord. Chancellor of England, the Chief Justiciar of the Empire, seated side by side, beaming, smiling, nay chuckling like schoolboy friends meeting after many years. When they spoke, moved or even while they sat, the 3 B's of an English Judge were in evidence, and they each personified the humanity, the strength and the intellectual power of the law. I can still see the clean-shaven face and powerful physique of the Lord Chancellor, and I can still hear his clear-toned, carrying voice, heard without effort. It has been well said that his address was "the principal outstanding feature of that great gathering, splendid in its legal wisdom, its ethical tone, its human touch and in its unsurpassed literary style." There was no seeking after applause, nothing of the oratorical, clear even where it was complex, and dignified in the simplicity of its delivery. It was indeed an epoch making speech which sent away American and Canadian lawyers alike conscious of the fact that the English law and the English language bound closely together the English speaking countries of the world, and made all realise that a mutual understanding meant much for the avoidance of war.

It is not idle, I think, to attribute, in some degree, the sympathy

of the American lawyers with the cause of the allies to that meeting at Montreal, and especially to the Lord Chancellor's wonderful address, in which he wove closely together the threads of our common purpose and the threads of our common outlook and connection with the problems of the world.

I will not dwell upon his work in the War Department-that work has brought him much praise and much blame. It cannot be doubted that he made a great and sustained effort at army improvements. Whether his plans went as far as they should have gone, or could have gone, will probably always remain the subject of dispute, but the work of the Expeditionary Force, that so-called "Contemptible Little Army," with its story of undimmed glory and the performance of the territorial regiments in every theatre of the war will always be pointed to as evidence of his genius and of his patriotic zeal. In 1919 Lord Haldane writes with dignity and pride:

"On the main issues the German General Staff made an astounding strategical blunder: First, in not recognizing what it means to war with a country determined to command the seas; second, its failure to strike with submarines and destroyers at all costs when the Expeditionary Force mobilized on Monday, August 3rd, 1914."

Lord Haldane's activities as a lawyer were not confined to appearances as counsel in English cases alone, but he appeared frequently before the Privy Council in cases from the Dominions and from the Colonies, and upon his elevation to the Lord Chancellorship be became necessarily closely in touch with the many constitutional and legal problems affecting this Dominion.

Lord Haldane's view with respect to appeals from the Canadian Courts is the view so well expressed in the words of another great Judge, Lord Fitzgerald, in the case of Prince v. Gagnon. I quote the language of Lord Fitzgerald in rendering judgment in the last mentioned case:

"Their Lordships are not prepared to advise Her Majesty to exercise her prerogative by admitting an appeal to Her Majesty in Council from the Supreme Court of Canada, save where the case is of gravity involving matter of public interest, or some important question of law, or affecting property of considerable amount, or where the case is otherwise of some public importance, or of a very substantial character."

Time will not permit me to refer in detail to the numerous cases affecting Canada in which Lord Chancellor Haldane has delivered

28 A. C. p. 103 (1882).

the judgment of the Privy Council, but I will refer very shortly to a few of his judgments.

Perhaps the citizens of Toronto have not unanimously approved, although possibly few lawyers would care to quarrel with, the decision of the Privy Council, as delivered by Lord Chancellor Haldane, in the case of Toronto and Niagara Power Company v. The Corporation of North Toronto, where it will be remembered that the Privy Council declared that the franchise granted to the Toronto and Niagara Power Company gave power to the company to erect poles on the public streets without the permission of the Council.

Another famous case in which Lord Haldane was concerned arose out of the Ne Temere decree which had been the subject of much agitation in Canada. I refer to the decision of the Privy Council in the matter of the proposed amendments to the Marriage Act (1912) A.C., p. 880, when the Privy Council upheld the Dominion Supreme Court, and declared the respective powers of the Dominion and the Provinces with respect to marriage-curiously enough the decision of that great body being delivered by a bachelor Lord Chancellor.

Another famous case was Rex v. The Royal Bank, when judgment was rendered declaring ultra vires legislation of the Province of Alberta, which attempted to confiscate some $6,000,000.00 of the Alberta and Greatwaterways Railway Company deposited in the Royal Bank at Edmonton, in that Province.

The case of the The Attorney-General of British Columbia v. The Attorney-General of Canada is another illustration of some of the problems which have come before the Lord Chancellor. In that case the powers of that Province and of the Dominion in reference to fishery rights were considered, and it is interesting to recall that Lord Haldane in maintaining the Dominion's fishery rights in tidal waters based it upon the "public right to fish in tidal waters -a right, he pointed out, not established but re-established by Magna Charta itself.

It is indeed odd that the title "Lord Chancellor" should be the title of the highest Judge in the State, when it is remembered that the title "Chancellor " originally designated the Court Usher who sat at the cancelli or lattice work separating the Judges from the audience.

The office of Lord Chancellor dates back to the reign of Edward the Confessor, and from the Lord Chancellors, themselves ecclesiastics,

we derived those equitable principles which ameliorated the hardships of the common law. According to Barton's Equity the Chancellor, as early as the reign of Edward I., began to exercise an original and independent jurisdiction as a Court of Equity in contradistinction to a Court of Law.

I am aware that some of our leading jurists and lawyers are not strong supporters of the continuation of the present appeal to the Privy Council, but on the other side I bring to the consideration of the members of the Bar the view of Lord Chancellor Haldane as set forth in the July (1923) number of the Empire Review, from which I quote the following extracts:

"It is convenient to have as the tribunal of ultimate resort a body which is detached and impartial and which yet administers the law of the particular Dominion and administers it with the large outlook which is the result of having to take cognisance of systems of jurisprudence of various natures-its very remoteness and its genuine unwillingness to claim jurisdiction has given it a certain popularity all over the Empire.-The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is a real link between the Dominion and the Colonies and the Mother Country. How long the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council will continue to exist as the link of empire which it is today and how soon the distant parts of the world which are under the constitutional rule of the British Crown, will continue to regard the committee as a Supreme Tribunal of ultimate appeal, it is not possible to predict the jurisdiction appears to be at present generally recognised as a useful and convenient one, and there is little real desire to disturb it on the part of the great majority of those concerned. Its work is of a delicate kind and often difficult as well as delicate." As Lord Haldane says, "Its varied duties and atmosphere have produced at times great personalities," and, "The weight of their authority produced contentment with their decisions." "There is no visible weakening of the old tradition of giving the best help available to the committee, and the Judges of the Dominion and of India have begun in a new fashion to lend their assistance."

Personally I like to think that from Ontario the Robinsons, the Mowats, the Blakes, the McCarthys, the Oslers, a Riddell, a Nesbitt, a Hellmuth and a Tilley and other leaders of our Bar have entered and will continue to enter in wigs and robes the old oak panelled room in Downing Street to argue and expound the principles and practices of the law "before five elderly gentlemen, who without wigs or robes sit round the horseshoe oak table of the Judge with the mask of years of immersion in legal contemplation written on their brows."

I like to think that some future Lord Chancellor will deserve to receive, as his just due, praise similar to that eulogy bestowed by .ex-Lord Chancellor Birkenhead on the then ex-Lord Chancellor Haldane, "Lord Haldane has all his life been the most industrious man in England. He is immensely courteous, very patient, very learned, very conscientious-occasionally somewhat reminiscent (note-reminiscent men are not revolutionary-F.D.K.)-his colleagues at the Bar and at the Bench know his great qualities-his work on the Judicial Committee has been beyond all praise, so that no name throughout the British Empire is more respected than that of Lord Haldane."

With this faithful servant of the King as Lord Chancellor. I find myself unable to believe that our laws. our Courts, or our constitution will be radically or suddenly changed.

I believe that the following extract from Lord Haldane's article in reference to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council indicates his mental outlook on this as on other problems, and should be assurance, if any is needed, that he will not attempt to destroy those things which we and he have hitherto held as sacred.

"There is still more that can be done, but care must be taken to bring it about, not rashly or hurriedly, but in a fashion in which continuity of spirit may remain unbroken.

"For the spirit is everything with a tribunal of a nature so anomalous from a modern point of view as is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. It is hopeless to search for the secret of such success as it has had merely in printed documents. For it is not in the written letter that the description of the real nature of the Court is to be found. The true description can only be given by those who, living here or coming from afar, have been in daily contact with the working of this extraordinary organisation, and have experienced the extent to which it is continuously seeking to adapt its life to the Leeds which it has to fulfil as a link between the parts of the Empire."

Peterborough.

F. D. KERR.