case we are to recognize the Executor's right to raise an action, in the other we are to deny it? Take the case of a slander-par excellence a personal injury. That may affect, and affect materially, the value of the personality. Imagine part of the estate to consist of the good-will of an old-established and prosperous private Bank, and that shortly before the sole partner's death an unfounded allegation has been made that his house is in financial difficulties. Is no action to lie in such a case as that?

It is not our object, however, to repeat the arguments which have been adduced, both in England and in Scotland, against the rule embodied in the maxim. Our object rather has been to note that in their zeal to assimilate the laws of the two countries, the Scots Courts have taken a retrograde step. Looking to the opinion of Lord Watson in Wood's case (supra) we are hopeful that if the point comes before the House of Lords in a Scots Appeal a return will be made to what we submit common sense demands, and Scots Law allowed, prior to Bern's case.

R. M. WILLIAMSON.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

[Short notices do not necessarily exclude fuller review hereafter.]

The Referendum in America. By ELLIS P. OBERHOLTZER. Publications. of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 1893. 225 pp. MR. OBERHOLTZER's book is a most seasonable and a most important publication.

The book is seasonable because the Referendum or the 'People's Veto' occupies the attention of publicists throughout Europe, and will probably soon command the attention of the people of England.

The book is important because it contains a whole body of useful information about the nature and the operation of the people's veto in America. Some of the results contained in or suggested by Mr. Oberholtzer's treatise may be summed up in the following statements.

First. The Referendum, though its name, which comes from Switzerland, is little known in the United States, is there an institution of indigenous growth and exists in one form or another in almost every State of the Union.

Secondly. The Referendum as practised in America is a merely negative exercise of popular authority. It is a veto, and moreover a veto on legislation. It has no connexion with the settlement of differences of opinion which may divide the two Chambers or Houses which constitute one legislative body. Whether in England the people's veto might or might not be employed to terminate conflicts between the House of Lords and the House of Commons is a matter on which in these pages it is unnecessary to express an opinion. All that need be said is that American constitutionalism affords no precedent for such employment.

Thirdly. The Referendum is at once a Democratic and Conservative institution. It is Democratic because it increases the power of the citizens by giving them a part in legislation, at any rate when it is legislation. of a constitutional character. It is Conservative because whenever it is applied it increases instead of diminishing the checks on legislation.

Fourthly. The Referendum as it exists in the States of the Union is all but invariably applied to constitutional legislation, but it is also often applied in one shape or another to legislation which does not affect the constitution.

Fifthly. When the purely negative character of the Referendum is realized, an historical analogy suggests itself to which Mr. Oberholtzer does not, we think, call attention. The Referendum corresponds in modern Democratic constitutions to the veto of the Crown under the ancient constitution of England. The veto of the sovereign people is exactly analogous to the veto of the sovereign king.

Sixthly. The people's veto works satisfactorily and without any particular difficulty among the English people on the other side the Atlantic. In considering, however, its operation in America as a check on constitutional legislation, it is necessary to bear in mind that every American State has a written constitution, and that the Americans have either invented or acclimatized one of the most important pieces of legislative mechanism, namely the Constitutional Convention.' A. V. D.

The Principles of Pleading in Civil Actions under the Judicature Acts. With observations on indorsements on writs, trial without pleadings and other business preliminary to trial. By W. BLAKE ODGERS, Q.C. Second Edition. London: Stevens & Sons, Lim. 1894. 8vo. xxxix and 315 pp. (108. 6d.)

THE appearance of a second edition of this useful handbook of practice, incorporating and explaining the New Rules of November 1893, will be warmly welcomed by the common law junior, the bulk of whose daily work is concerned with the subjects of which it treats.

The 55 pages which have been added to the first edition, consist mainly of the first three chapters, which deal respectively with 'Indorsement on Writ,'Procedure under Order XIV under New Rules,' and 'Proceeding to Trial without Pleadings.' Of these the second and third chapters are entirely new, while the first chapter is chapter vi. in the first edition in an enlarged and amplified form.

The working of the new system of trial without pleadings is made abundantly clear by twenty-four useful precedents. We do not agree with the author's suggestion on p. 33 that it would be well if cases of this class could be placed in the same special list' as actions in which leave to defend is given under O. XIV. Wills J., to whom the common law 'short cause' list has been assigned, has repeatedly protested against any but the shortest cases being placed in his list, while our author's precedents show that trial without pleadings is intended to be applicable to lengthy actions of tort of no real urgency, which have certainly no claim to priority over actions of commercial importance.

Dr. Odgers, at pp. 22, 23, shows his usual clearness in endeavouring to thread his way through the conflicting and unsatisfactory decisions as to how far a specially indorsed writ must set out all the material facts necessary to constitute a complete cause of action, according to the rules applicable to an ordinary statement of claim. Till this has been more clearly and definitely settled by judicial authority, we accept our author's view that Fruhauf v. Grosvenor (67 L. T. p. 351) 'is still the law.'

The volume before us has been enriched by the addition of some more valuable precedents, and the most recent decisions from every series of reports have been incorporated in the text. The saying that the young lawyer learns his law at the expense of his clients' has hitherto been especially true as to questions of practice. The book before us, however, goes far towards providing the same royal road to a knowledge of practice, which so many excellent text-books have during the last twenty years furnished to a knowledge of substantive law. It supplies a distinct and long-felt want for those who are seriously endeavouring to make the practice of the law their profession. S. H. L.

The Principles of the Law of Evidence. By W. M. BEST. Eighth Edition. By J. M. LELY. With Notes to American and Canadian Cases. By CHARLES F. CHAMBERLAYNE of the Boston Bar. London: Sweet & Maxwell, Lim. Boston: The Boston Book Co. 1893.

THE eighth edition of Best on Evidence appears eleven years after the second. This seems to indicate a steady demand for it, explicable by the fact that it is more coherently written, much more of a book and less of a dictionary, than the standard work of Taylor, and that Stephen's Digest, and the various works more or less modelled upon it, require a great deal of labour to be rightly apprehended by the conscientious student. Best is a good book for a person to read who comes fresh to the study of the Principles of Evidence. Decisions upon points of evidence are less frequent now than in the days of special pleading, and thus it is not unnatural that the more important part of the new matter in the present edition is concerned with statutes, of which the application is largely to the Criminal Law. With reference to the cases in which young children are permitted to give evidence not upon oath, we have sought in vain for any mention of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, but inasmuch as the book contains no index to statutes it may be rash to say positively that there is none. Upon the more important subjects of the competence to give evidence of accused persons and their wives or husbands, Mr. Lely, the present editor, is betrayed into one or two errors of fact. Thus he says that the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 affords the only instance of an accused person being enabled to give evidence on a charge of felony.' This is inaccurate, as there is another instance in s. 4 of the Explosive Substances Act 1883 (46 Vict. c. 3, s. 4). The reason of this particular proviso, however, was probably less the general view of the subject now widely taken, than the fact that this section throws upon the accused the onus of proving that his possession of explosives is lawful, as by the ordinary principles of law it would be presumed to be. Mr. Lely thinks that the authority in favour of an alteration of the law' whereby all accused persons should be competent witnesses, 'is now so great that it would be waste of time to controvert it.' No doubt the preponderance of such authority is great, but it consists largely of the opinions of men like the late and present Lord Chancellors and the Master of the Rolls, who have had far less opportunity than some of their colleagues of observing personally the practical working of the rule of competence. It would be highly desirable to obtain full statements on the point from the judges of the Queen's Bench Division who have been presiding in Crown Courts for the last six or seven years, and if this were done some conscientious advocates of reform might be considerably surprised. An interesting and rather well-executed feature of this edition is the American Notes' added by Mr. Chamberlayne, of the Boston Bar, at the end of each chapter, touching the American and Canadian cases that have been quoted. We could wish that the radically false and misleading distinction between so-called 'direct' and so-called 'circumstantial' evidence had been excised, but perhaps that would, in the editor's judgment, have been taking too great a liberty with the original text, excused as the blunder is by the example of Bentham, and other writers who ought to have known better. We are glad to note that though the book has been printed, for copyright purposes, in America, the spelling is in accordance with English rules.

The Law of Executors and Administrators. By SIR EDWARD VAUGHAN WILLIAMS. Ninth Edition, by the HON. SIR ROLAND L. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, Knt. In two vols. cxvi and 2131 pp. La. 8vo. London: Stevens & Sons, Lim.; Sweet & Maxwell, Lim. 1893. (£3 188.)

THE new edition of 'Williams on Executors' deserves the highest compliment which it is in our power to pay it. It has been constantly used during some four busy months and it has never been found wanting. It is a book which has a great reputation to sustain. Probably there is no textbook which is in constant use both in the Temple and in Lincoln's Inn stands higher. And the ninth edition does nothing to detract from that reputation. It is a quarter of a century since the last edition by Sir Edward Vaughan Williams was issued. Since then the book has been in the hands of Mr. Justice Vaughan Williams and his late brother—hereditas paterna et fraterna-the Judge is now solely responsible. One hardly likes to think how many Acts have been passed or how many cases decided since 1868 which must needs be incorporated in the book to bring it up to date. To do this and yet maintain the text of the original is a task the difficulty of which can only be realized by those who have tried it. Upon a single point only have we found a joint-not loose but-insufficiently strong in the Vaughan-Williams harness. There is a familiar paragraph in the text which reproduces the rule laid down in 1858 by Whicker v. Hume (7 H. L. Cas. 124) as to the law of the place of domicil deciding the validity of a will. Upon the formal validity of a will as distinguished from its material validity a change was made in 1861 by Lord Kingsdown's Act, 24 & 25 Vict. c. 114. It is hardly enough to warn the reader of this change in the law by a mere See however' in a note. This sed vide should have been limited by the character of the Act. The real use of a text-book is however as a hunting-ground, and no lawyer ought to pass by such a reference as this to an Act of Parliament without reading the Act for himself. One other quarrel we have with the book, and that is an inevitable quarrel with the length of the Addenda and Corrigenda' caused by the interval which elapsed between the time of the work leaving the hands of Mr. Justice Vaughan Williams and the date of publication. Apart from these things, and they are small things, the ninth edition of Williams on Executors' is as good and as carefully edited a text-book as there is to be found among the tools of a lawyer's trade.

A Treatise on the Law of Partnership.

By the Right Hon. Sir NATHANIEL LINDLEY. Sixth Edition. By WALTER B. LINDLEY; with an Appendix on the Law of Scotland, by J. CAMPBELL LORIMER. London: Sweet & Maxwell, Lim. 1893. La. 8vo. lxii and 939 PP.

THE passing of the Partnership Act, 1890, has made it necessary to alter the form of Lord Justice Lindley's well-known treatise to some extent. Equity lawyers need not be told that, as the Partnership Act was in almost all respects a purely codifying Act, any material discrepancy of substance between this standard text-book and the Act would go to show that the Act had so far failed of its purpose. But we are not aware of any such. We commend to law reformers the introductory remarks on codification. Lord Justice Lindley points out-adding the great weight of his authority and experience to opinions already expressed by others to the same effect-that