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ment. There are, however, a few circum-lows that the decline of $3,523,777, in the stances worth noting, and one of special value of the year's commerce, must have significance. During the twelve months, it been wholly in our exports to other counwill be observed by the foregoing returns, tries. This is the fact, and an examination our importations of foreign goods once more of the exports of the various Provinces clearbegan to revive. The advance in "goods ly proves that it was solely attributable to the entered for consumption" was not large, poor harvest gathered in Ontario in 1876. amounting in the aggregate only to a little Whilst the exports of all the other Provinces over $1,500,000; there were, however, remained about the same or slightly im$3,000,000 worth additional imported, but proved, those of Ontario-which are chiefly which had not passed the customs on the agricultural products-fell off over $5,000,30th June, and consequently do not appear ooo, which more than covers the deficiency in the returns. This circumstance is impor- on the year's transactions, as above given. tant,as it indicates that our wholesale importing trade had not only touched the inmost circle of contraction, but had begun to recover its elasticity before the close of the year. Our importations having increased, it fol

For purposes of comparison, attention is invited to the following exhibit of the Imports, Exports, and total commerce of the Dominion during each year since Confederation took place :

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The fluctuations of our commerce during each of the past ten years are distinctly traceable by the foregoing table, which strengthens the opinion that as 1873-4 was the period of the greatest inflation, so 18767 was that of the greatest contraction. The fact already adverted to, that the rapid decline which took place in our importations for several successive years was arrested, and gave place to an increase in 1877, is strong evidence on the latter point. Our imports first began to decline in 1874. The amount was only $110,425 during that year -the scale, so to speak, having then only begun to descend; in the following twelve months (1875) there was a further decline of $7,785,512, and in 1876, bottom was touched with the immense reduction of $24,885,439. During 1877, to continue the simile, the scale again turned and began to move up

wards. Our imports increased from $94,733, 218 to the value of $96,300.483 if we take "goods entered for consumption," or $99,327,962 if we count in the total importations of the year.

Those persons who hold that the trade of nations experiences more or less of a regular ebb and flow will find confirmation of their views, as well as evidence that Canada has now rounded the point towards some improvement in business, by the fact that the four years of expansion which closed in 1873 have now been balanced by four years of contraction, ending last fall. The extent of the expansion, as might naturally be expected in a young and thriving country like Canada, has been much the greater; but, curiously enough, the Dominion has experienced what may be called four consecutive fat, and four consecutive lean years.

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246,983

770,188

P. E. Island

1,665,519

653,816 2,393,057

10,849,673 1,029,130

6,113,768

6,927,077

1,735,427 1,214,826

Columbia..

Total..

1,382,679 2,166,799 1,792,347 2,755,787 1,921,217 2,076,476 2,944,975 1,380,878 89,789,922 80,966,435 75,875,393 127,514,594 94,733,218

Turning to the current fiscal year (1878), there now remains little doubt that our commerce both in exports and imports will show considerable increase on the 30th of June next. The Minister of Finance, the Hon. Mr. Cartwright, announced some months ago that the public revenue was increasing. This means enlarged importations; and the unusually abundant harvest reaped in most parts of the Dominion last fall, renders it highly probable that our exports of agricultural productions will be greater than for at least three years past. Were the prospects of our Lumber trade equally hopeful-which is unfortunately not the case--the commercial outlook for 1878 would be brighter than at any period since the crash of Jay Cook & Co., in the fall of 1873.

How far the general business of Canada will be favourably affected by the circumstan

96,300,483

ces adverted to in this article, but which we are unable to do more than glance at, is a question upon which opinions will doubtless differ. The considerations which enter into its solution are many and complicated, and, consequently, no forecast of the commercial future, however probable and carefully made, is likely to meet with general acceptance. The few general observations bearing on this point, which follow, are advanced with much diffidence.

That the wave of depression has now passed its farthest limit, is a view which may be confidently accepted. But that there will be anything like a rapid revival of business, as some sanguine persons appear to think, may be dismissed with equal confidence, more particularly after the disappointing experience in many lines of goods during the early winter months. That a too

roseate view is unwarranted by the circum- which was recently issued by Dun, Wyman stances finds confirmation in the return of & Co. Their figures for the past two years failures throughout the Dominion last year, are as follows:

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Whilst quoting this record of insolvency as a curb to expectations too hopeful to be realized, it does not alter the general conclusions at which we have arrived, regarding the existing commercial position, inasmuch as the failures during the latter part of 1877 are shown by the same returns to have declined in an unusually marked and striking

manner.

The average number of failures, for each quarter, during the first nine months of the year, was 548, and the average liabilities, $7.634,992; but during the last three months the number declined to 244, and the amount of liabilities to $4,606,000. This fact is quite significant, and strengthens the opinion that the worst has been passed, and that the business of the country, though not much improved in buoyancy, is in a sounder and

better position than it was twelve month.

ago.

The ill effects of too easy compositions and discharges, and too long credits, and overcrowding in nearly all departments of trade, doubtless, still affect perniciously the fabric of business, and will continue to hinder the process of recuperation. But progress, however sluggish, is now certainly being made in the right direction, and on review of the statistics and circumstances which have been advanced, more especially the abundant harvest last fall, we feel warranted in predicting a moderate revival in our own foreign commerce and internal business during 1878, to be followed in due timeslowly, but surely-by a fuller flow of the wave of advancement and prosperity.

JAMES YOUNG.

LAW AND THE STUDY OF LAW.

... the lawless science of our law,
That codeless myriad of precedent,
That wilderness of single instances.'
TENNYSON-Aylmer's Field.

Table," I ventured to put my end HE month before last, "Round the into the lion's mouth, and to say a few words in depreciation of the study of the law, when pursued, as I believe it to be by the majority of our lawyers, empirically and narrowly. Last month two legal gentlemen (presumably) took me in hand with a good deal of pitying condescension, and disposed of me and my legal heresies to their entire satisfaction. As wildness of assertion and ignorance of the subject whereof I spoke are the gravest charges they lay against me, and as the Table is a gathering place for informal causeries in literary undress, rather than for arguments in full logical and statistical armour, I have craved space here to answer their criticisms in some detail. Perhaps, I should rather say the second; for, as my first critic disposes of me in two or three lines, and then passes on to touch a nobler shield, he shall have a return of the compliment. He accuses me bluntly of ignorance. It is consoling that in my darkness I had stumbled on views in which even his superior erudition

can discern "much truth."

Before proceeding it will be well to clear up a misapprehension into which both my critics have fallen, and which it is, therefore, possible that other readers may share with them. They have mistaken what was intended as a glance at the tendency of the study of our law in its present form, for a thrust at the moral character of the legal profession, and a tilt against the principles upon which is reared our cumbrous legal superstructure; and over this imaginary offence they are sadly perturbed. The head and front of my offending here was the remark, that, in many conspicuous instances, the narrowing tendency of law study is realized, and that the profession generally is chargeable with a not disinterested conservatism; in support of which propositions some evidence

will be presently adduced. Still, I must say, as to the practice of law, that in proportion to its noble potentialities on the side of right and peace, a very sorry, inadequate, and selfconsiderate realization of them is made by

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the rank and file of the profession. But this merely in passing. It is equally a mistake to construe, as directed against the principles of our law, words written concerning the study will be made manifest by echoing the opinof it in its present form. The distinction ion of Sir James F. Stephen. He says: 'No one would, upon a proper occasion, uphold more strenuously than I the substantial merits of the law of England; but I suppose I may assume that its form is in the highest degree cumbrous and intricate, and that consolidation and codification are the proper remedies for those defects." Again, "When law is divested of all technicalities, stated in simple and natural language, and so arranged as to show the natural relation of different

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parts of the subject, it becomes not merely intelligible, but deeply interesting to educated men practically conversant with the subject matter to which it relates."+ Bentham, speaking of the law as it was in his day, in his Papers on Codification, addressed to the President of the United States, says that, “confused, indeterminate, inadequate, ill-adapted, and inconsistent as, to a vast extent," it was in form, "nothing could be much further from the truth than if, in speaking of the matter of which English law is composed, a man were to represent it as being of no use." So far from having attacked legal first principles, reference to my note will show that a dence-was indicated as the proper though study of them—that is, of scientific jurisprusadly neglected antidote for legal formalism It may obviate further and empiricism. misconception to premise that, in using the word "law," I do not mean lawyers, nor scientific jurisprudence; but simply the Common, Statute, and Judge-made law of

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England and her Colonies; and by "the study of the law," the study of this chaotic mass, as the great body of the "profession" is now pursuing it.

ness of single instances," which make up "the lawless science of our law,"-to what the late Charles Sumner spoke of as "the niceties of real law, with its dependencies of descents, retr ainders, and executory devises-also the ancient hair-splitting technicalities of special pleading, both creatures of an illiterate age, gloomy with black-letter and verbal subtleties." But the dogmatic assumption of an analogy between a chaotic mass like this, and any of the natural or exact sciences, will hardly be considered to hold water. While my friend's argument is irrelevant on the one issue, it is simply a begging of the question on the other. The influence of legal study being narrowing, as he admits, when pursued exclusively, it was asserted (and he has failed to contravene the assertion) that it is, and necessarily must be pursued almost exclusively, in order to attain that thorough working knowledge requisite for the successful practitioner. I further emphasized the very important consideration that this practically exclusive devotion to the study was commonly made by the student

covered by his studentship, when his mind. is still malleable, but taking its final 'set.'

Much of the argument of my second critic is founded upon an ignoratio elenchi, as proving what was not denied, and denying what was not asserted. My assertion was, that the study of the law is "narrowing, deadening, and inducive of, at least, these mental vices: the tendencies to exalt the letter and word over the spirit and very thing; to join hands with precedent and tradition against even moderate and rational progress; and to accept in all matters the dicta of authority without verification." My critic meets this by saying that numbers of men who have studied the law have been of elevated character; that the study of law is not narrowing if it be not studied exclusively; and that law is an essential branch of a lib eral education. These are all truisms quite beside the question, as irrelevant as they are self-evident. I spoke of a tendency, not of an absolute fatalism. Everybody knows that strong characters will resist more or less suc-" at the important stage of his life, generally cessfully influences, mental or moral, which might swamp average ones. But is it not allowable to criticise the tendency of any one I pointed out that the one remedy which study by itself? And is it not a strange way would not require him to desert his legal of meeting such criticism to say that this studies, but would, on the contrary, facilitate tendency may be kept in restraint by other them and enhance a hundred-fold their instudies? Whatever may be their readjusting terest, while it made them broadening, eleeffects, if they be entered into, the tendency vating, and, in every sense, valuable, was of the one in question remains the same. "the gladsome light of jurisprudence,' The fact that walking tends to strengthen though of a kind very different from that the legs is in no wise impugned by the facts which Coke meant in using those words, that rowing strengthens the arms, and that that is, the history, science, and even the walking is a necessary part of proper exer- philosophy of law. These, I said, are necise. My friend admits that the tendency glected among us; they find "no place in of legal study exclusively pursued is narrow- the regular Canadian course," and have little ing; i. e., that the tendency of legal study, or no attention paid to them by the majority considered alone, is narrowing. As I was of our lawyers. My friend hopes that I do not considering the tendency of legal study alone, "assume that the few text-books prescribed I fail to see why he should have put his ad- for students" are the only ones of the "rehesion to my view in the form of a refuta-gular Canadian course. Why not? By the tion of it. Toretort the charge on several other studies, is on a par logically with meeting a personal accusation with, "You're another." And this would be true, even were the assumption allowable, that botany and pure mathematics, for example-methodized, orderly, demonstrable, and logically codified sciences are parallel in their influence on the mind to that disorderly, incoherent, and "codeless myriad of precedent, that wilder

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regular Canadian course," the course laid down for students was referred to as plainly as might be. What a barrister or attorney may read after passing through it-after this exclusive devotion to an admittedly narrowing study, at a most critical mental periodis scarcely relevant to a criticism of that curriculum itself. But, even allowing that it is so, is my friend's case any stronger? He claims that "our successful lawyers pur

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