Korean peasants whom they call White Swans;" another is the ghoulish confession of the fugitive, Trufanoff; still another is the horrible experience of the convict, Lisakoff. The structural plan of the book proclaims it the work of a dexterous writer, one who achieves the strongest effects from his situations. In his hands, the fantastic becomes credible; the impossible happens. "Man and Mystery in Asia" is a congeries of geology, botany, natural history, folk-lore; a drama of animals and men who at times are scarcely distinguishable from beasts of the animal kingdom. It is a book without a dull moment between its pages, and although the ultimate impression is tinged with tragedy, the narrative is shot through with flashes of sharp wit; with subtlety and tenderness that evoke a warm sympathy for, and a sense of kinship with, a naïve and primitive people. The Law of Banks and Banking, Bills, Notes, and Cheques. M. M. By John ($12.00: The production of good law-books in Canada is impeded, not only by the commercial limitations of a very restricted market, but also by the fact that our educational system, hitherto resting mainly upon office apprenticeship, has failed to produce that type of learned lawyer who combines practical experience and sound judgment with the gifts of literary style and lucid exposition. Mr. Falconbridge has long ago established his right to rank among legal scholars, and the fact that his book has now reached a third edition is a better tribute to its practical value than any eulogy from a reviewer. The greater part of the book is occupied by a commentary, section by section, upon the Bank Act and the Bills of Exchange Act, the latter being carefully collated with the corresponding provisions of the British and American statutes. Each part is prefaced with a scholarly historical survey, in which the development of the law is carefully traced, and there is a short chapter on the general nature of negotiable instruments. In this we would suggest that Mr. Falconbridge might have rendered good service if he had more firmly opposed the very common inaccuracy of using the word "negotiable" as if it were synonymous with transferable by delivery." It is true, as Mr. Falconbridge says, that the term 'negotiable' is used in at least two senses;" but there is only one legitimate sense, and all others should be condemned er cathedra. In his own use of the word throughout the book Mr. Falconbridge is always most scrupulously accurate. 66 The various difficult problems presented by the law of negotiable instruments are all carefully analyzed. Of these there are still too many, and the business community has a right to demand that the law governing this most important part of commercial life should be lucid, logical, and certain. In particular the law relating to estoppel by negli gence is in a very unsatisfactory state. The result of the House of Lords' decisions appears to be that a customer owes a duty to his bank to be careful in drawing his cheques, but that the drawer and the acceptor of a bill of exchange owe no such duty to subsequent holders for value. It is difficult to see any logical reason for this distinction, but the anom aly cannot now be corrected except by legislation. Perhaps some day Parliament will sweep away these refinements and lay down as a general rule that everyone who handles commercial paper owes a duty of care to all legitimate subsequent holders. A book of this type deserves to be much better printed, but at present the value of good printing is unfortunately very little appreciated in Canada. A thin and mean font of type has been used, and in several respects the printer has failed to consider the pleasure and comfort of the reader. For example, no typographical distinction has been made between the text of the statutes and the author's commentary, the reader being left to discover for himself on every page where Parliament ends and Mr. Falconbridge begins. Again, the usual practice of printing the names of cases in italics has been for some reason omitted. Let us hope that in the next edition the learned author will demand from his printers the respect which is his due. Doubtless Mr. Falconbridge can also blame the printer for the homely colloquialism which speaks of indictments being "squashed" (p. 394). H. A. S. Citizenship. By W. H. Haddow, Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1923. Price $2 postpaid. The Common Weal. By the Right Hon. Herbert Fisher, M.P., F.B.A., F.R.S., LL.D. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1924. Price $2.50 postpaid. These two books supply reading of that most excellent quality which my Lord Verulam thought on when he declared that it "maketh a full man." They may with appropriateness be considered together for the purpose of review, because each embodies a series of lectures delivered by its author on Citizenship to the University and City of Glasgow under the terms of the Stevenson Trust. There is a material difference between the treatment of the subject by the two writers, however; for while Sir Henry Hadow devotes himself to a theoretical discussion of the interrelationship of the individual and the State, Mr. Fisher disclaims any attempt at making a systematic contribution to political philosophy, and gives us for the most part practical views based on his own varied parliamentary and official experience. At the outset of his inquiry Sir Henry accepts Dr. William Boyd's definition of citizenship as "the right ordering of our several loyalties," and proceeds to discuss "the civic idea as it has taken shape and wavered and recovered itself in successive periods of European history." It is familiar history that to the Greeks of the pre-Sophistic age State-supremacy was inescapable; civilisation, in their view, was conditioned upon such supremacy. The famous Athenian oath of loyalty was instinct with this idea. But when the Sophists taught the young Athenians to inquire what return they had for all their service and devotion to the State, loyalty as a political force was shaken. Chercher à connaitre, c'est chercher à douter. Again, we know that when the patriotism of the people vanished before the con- . templation of corruption in high places, the Roman Empire fell to pieces. 'It took many centuries for this feeling to recover its due place in European politics," says Sir Henry Hadow, and he adds: "Our citizenship owes little enough to the dark ages; but the same is equally true during the supreme period of the Holy Roman Empire." Loyalty and civic patriotism found its revival in Dante, as the author points out; but we think his omission to ascribe to the writings of Jean Bodin some share in the origins of modern State citizenship is a notable one. Dr. J. N. Figgis (Divine Right of Kings, p. 129) says that "there is no question of the great effect of Bodin's writings upon those of Hobbes and Filmer and Leslie." And Sir Frederick Pollock (History of the Science of Politics, p. 51) claims that Bodin's opinions on public economy were far in advance of his age, and that "like Machiavelli, he showed in his own conduct as a citizen a settled attachment to freedom and justice, and suffered for his constancy." In Chapter IV. the author discusses the function of the State in the development of the individual citizen. In Chaper V. he points out the dangers of State absolutism, a theory which has, as we all know, led a great nation to its ruin in our own time. We get his own opinion of the true correlation of the individual and the State in his concluding chapter-the most provocative in the book-entitled "De Civitate Dei," where he says "the State can neither be degraded into the mere toolhouse and mechanism of the individual life, nor on the other hand isolated into a separate and determinate end which it is man's whole duty to serve. community are two powers appointed to carry on processes which pass beyond their limitations and to converge upon an end which is greater than their own. Only in so far as each recognizes its correlation with the other can this purpose be ultimately brought about." Sir William Hadow's book is well worth the lawyer's while to add to his library. It gives us a clear conception of the true foundations of democratic citizenship. It may be charged, however, against the author that in discussing the philosophy of the State he is disregardful of some excellent present-day authorities, such as Laski, McIlwain and Duguit. Man and Mr. Fisher is more of a man of affairs than Sir William Hadow, and for that reason we would naturally expect him to be predisposed to consider the utilitarian value of patriotism rather than to extol it as an abstract virtue. To his chapter on "The Claims of Neighbourhood" he prefixes as a motto D'Alembert's well-known saying: "Je préfère ma famille à moi, ma patrie à ma famille, et le genre humain à ma patrie.' Telle est la dèvise de l'homme vertueux;" and he justifies its truth by practical instances. Thus he finds it possible to counsel us that "Patriotism, local or national, should never give shelter to mediocrity, or minister to the spirit of rigid exclusion. The old critical maxim in the sphere of literature, that you should have preferences but no exclusions, applies with even added force in the region of political feeling." In the chapter entitled "Patriotism" he surveys historical examples of the chauvinistic tendencies of the sentiment, and arrives at the following conclusion: "It is then a matter for very careful consideration whether we have not now reached a stage of evolution in which it is necessary that our notions of patriotic duty should be revised, whether it is possible to maintain in full vigour the old exclusiveness, whether war has not become so great a menace to civilization that greater authority should be attached to such machinery as may be contrived for averting it; whether in fact, we are not passing into a phase of history when the purely national aspect of civic duty will be felt to be insufficient and will require more and more to be supplemented by wider conceptions." We have no apology to offer our readers for devoting so much space to these two books-presenting as they do a large content of the political thought that is shaping the destiny of the modern world. C. M. BOOKS RECEIVED. 1. The Action of Alcohol on Man. By Ernest H. Starling, Robert Hutchinson, Sir Frederick W. Mott and Raymond Pearl. Toronto: Longmans, Green & Co. 1923. 2. Chambers' Encyclopedia. New edition. Vol. IV. (Diop. to Frei.) London and Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, Limited. 3. Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History. Edited by Sir Paul Vinogradoff. Vol. VII. (Early Treatises on the Practice of Justices of the Peace in the XVth and XVIth Centuries. By B. H. Putnam, Ph.D.). Toronto: Oxford University Press. Price $5.50. Vol. 2. 1924. 4. Cobbett's Leading Cases on International Law. 4th edition. War and Neutrality. London: Sweet & Maxwell, Limited. 5. Conspiracy as a Crime and as a Tort in English Law. By David Harrison, LL.D. London: Sweet & Maxwell, Limited. 1924. 6. Report of the Thirty-second Conference of the International Law Association. London: Sweet & Maxwell, Limited. 1924. CORRESPONDENCE. The Editorial Board of the Canadian Bar Association does not hold itself responsible for the opinions of Correspondents. Contributions to this department of the REVIEW will be published only over the genuine names of the writers. LAW REPORTING IN CANADA. Editor Canadian Bar Review: Sir,-At this time, with the annual meeting of the Canadian Bar Association in the offing, the question that should be uppermost in the minds of all the thinking and reading members of the Bar of Canada, is that of law reporting. Especially this year is this doubly true, because the Bar Association is preparing to pay a visit to the Old Country, where, since 1865, before Confederation in Canada, the matter of law reporting was put on a basis which, though it may have its drawbacks, is far ahead of the haphazard lack of system which we are following here in Canada. It must be plain to any thinking man that, if the United Kingdom, with a population of eight or ten times that of Canada, can only support 15 series of reports, and that inadequately, as will afterwards be shown, Canada should not, and cannot possibly be in a position to support the 20 series of reports now published. The natural result of this is that every series of reports in Canada, except one, is lacking in more than one respect, and the only reason that I can assign for this, after long and careful consideration of the subject, is a provincialism that is not confined to any one province or any one city, but tars the whole country with the same brush. I have recently had some correspondence with the chairman of the reporting committee of one of the Western law societies. His desideratum is summed up in the following sentence, which I have taken from one of his letters: "If, therefore, there were one series (of reports) which gave so accurate and complete a report of the cases, as to leave nothing to be desired, it would be necessary to read only one report, buy only one, and provide space for only one, and if the cost can be materially reduced to the lawyer, that is of prime importance." You will note his first requirement is a complete series of reports. His second complaint is that the lawyer has to read more than one series of reports to find the law, and therefore to buy more than one series of reports. His third complaint is that these many and multifarious series of reports take up space, which, in these days of high cost of overhead and office expenses, is more than a small consideration, and finally his last requirement is a reduction of cost. My reply to him has been, and I consistently maintain this as incontrovertible, and that is that the Dominion Law Reports completely fill the bill of the series of reports that he is looking for, and his final requirement is within reach, if the Bench and Bar of Canada would support the D.L.R. to a sufficient extent to permit of the publishers reducing the price. The D.L.R. were originally advertised at 8 vols. a year, and the cost $40 a year. The price has never been raised, although, as you know, the cost of everything, without exception, has risen at least 100 per cent. during the war and post-war periods, and today the cost of the D.L.R. is $36 per year, an actual reduction of 10 per cent. from the original advertised price. I venture to state that such a reduction, between the years 1912 and 1924, is the only case of the reduction on the price of any commodity, from the prevailing pre-war price. I think, too, that you will find, whether you confine yourself to merely a cursory survey or whether you go into an exhaustive research, that the only series of reports that approaches absolute completeness is the Dominion Law Reports. In fact I think that the more you consider the D.L.R. from any and every angle the more you will be surprised at their completeness, considering the tremendous struggle that is at all times necessary to maintain the high standard that the D.L.R. have always maintained. The publishers' hypothesis has always been, and it brooks of no argument, that the law takes no account of the geographical or other |