charges for professional aid, advice and visits, and the cost of any medicines, or other medical or surgical appliances rendered or supplied by him to his patients.'

"Three readings of these words are given by the parties. The defr. contends that the words must be read as meaning that no person can recover charges for services rendered under a qualification which does not appear on the register; while the pursuer maintains that the section is to be read as allowing any person who is on the register to recover charges for services though rendered under a qualification which he does not possess; or, at any rate, under a qualification which he possesses, but which he has not registered.

"The first contention of the pursuer is, I think, wild. The 'raison d'être of the statute, as stated in its preamble, is- Whereas it is expedient that persons requiring medical aid should be enabled to distinguish qualified from unqualified practitioners be it therefore enacted,' etc. And then comes a series of clauses carefully framed to carry out this design. But, if it were held that an apothecary or a physician is enabled by this Act to recover fees for trying to perform surgical operations with an utterly insufficient knowledge of that branch of the profession, the result would be that the Act would be held as legalizing the very evils it was enacted to destroy. Further, every word of a statute must, if possible, receive a meaning, and its due meaning and effect. But if the pursuer's reading of the words of the 31st section be correct, then the words according to his qualification or qualifications,' 'medicine or surgery,' and ' the case may be,' lose all meaning and the effect they otherwise unmistakably have. If such had been the intention of the Legislature, the words I have mentioned would have been omitted, and the section would have read thus— Every person registered under this Act shall be entitled to practise medicine and surgery in any part of Her Majesty's dominions,' etc. In other words, if the statute had been intended to declare that though a person is only either a physician or a surgeon he may practise in both capacities, then it would probably have said so, and not have said the opposite, as it has done.

as

"The other contention of the pursuer has more to be said in its favour; for if a person possesses the qualifications (in other words, the skill) of a surgeon, and is actually on the register as a physician, it might seem immaterial to the patient, and superfluous for the physician, to register his surgical qualification also, and hard to deny him the right to recover reasonable charges for beneficial services rendered in that capacity. But this contention appears to me quite erroneous. It is based on a somewhat forced and unnatural reading of the words of the section, and it is more than counterbalanced by various weighty considerations. If it were sound, the same reasoning carried further would justify the description of the Act itself as hard, since it denies to an unregistered person, however skilful, the right to recover charges for medical or surgical services. In the second place, it would nullify the object of the statute. That object is avowedly the security of the patient: it is to enable him to select a person in whose skill in medicine or surgery he can confide-so far as skill can be guaranteed by the assurance that it was once possessed. But it is hopeless to predicate whether or not a person has the desiderated skill, when the silence of the register on the point may as well mean that he does not possess the qualification as that he has it but has not registered it. In the third place, if the pursuer's contention were sound, it would defeat the plan and policy of the statute, which places the decision as to a person's qualifications in medicine or surgery in a body of skilled medical men. The Act supplies a list of the colleges and other learned bodies whose diplomas are to be recognised as furnishing a qualification on which the holder may be registered. But, as the standard of knowledge required to obtain these diplomas may by some college, etc., be unduly lowered, sections 20 and 21 provide a means by which the privilege accorded to that college, etc., is to be withheld from it till the standard of attainments is again raised. The primary moving body in that matter is to be the Medical Council, i.e., a committee of the most distinguished men in the medical profession. Again, if a person desires to have his name put on the register, he

must satisfy the Registrar that he possesses the requisite qualification; and if the Registrar's view be adverse to the applicant, he may appeal to the Medical Council. The providing such appeal implies that questions of difficulty as to the sufficiency of the qualification may arise. But if the contention of the pursuer were sound, the delicate duty of deciding such a point might be thrust in the most summary way on any judge. The Legislature, however, seems (and very properly) to have preferred that the decision of such a point should rest with the Medical Council. It has disallowed any person to sue for remuneration for medical or surgical services, unless his qualification has received the imprimatur of the Registrar or the Medical Council; and, in any view, it has withheld from courts of law the power of looking at a person's medical or surgical qualification unless his name appears on the register.

"But a judge is just as fit to decide whether a person possesses a medical or surgical qualification, as the case may be, if that person is not on the register at all, as where he is, but only on one qualification. And yet, the pursuer contends that though I would have been debarred from considering his qualification if he had not been on the register at all, yet as he is on the register on one qualification, I am by that circumstance authorised and fitted to decide whether he has any other qualification sufficient to justify him in suing on it, i.e., in registering it. I think such a contention is quite unsound, and it might lead to ludicrous results. Judges, like doctors, may differ; and different judges might take different views as to the qualifications of a practitioner. His patients might, and probably would, reside in different judicial districts; and as the courts in which he would sue to recover his fees would be determined by the domicile of the patients, it might occur that the same person might be held entitled to charge for surgical or medical services rendered on one side of a road or river, but not for those rendered on the other. Then, again, it would be hard if every judge agreed in holding a person entitled to sue on a qualification which the Registrar and Medical Council refused to recognise and could not be compelled to register. Lastly, there is no hardship in requiring a person who really possesses a surgical or medical qualification to register it also before he practises on it. The cost is only five shillings, and the trouble is very slight. "For these and other reasons, I think that the defender is right in maintaining that the legitimate and only way of reading the words of the 31st section of the Medical Act is as implying that a medical man is entitled to recover in a court of law charges for services only when rendered under a qualification which appears on the register.

"The point, indeed, is a somewhat novel one. The case most closely in point, of any I have been able to find, is that of Leman v. Fletcher, 2nd May 1873, 42 Law Journal (N.S.), p. 214, in which the Court of Queen's Bench held that a registered surgeon cannot recover charges for medical advice and attendance or medicines administered in the cure of diseases and complaints which do not require surgical treatment, though he can if the case is a surgical one. In the present case, the services rendered and the expenses incurred were for a matter purely surgical; and as the pursuer is only registered on a medical qualification, I hold in law that he is not entitled to recover charges for such services, and I therefore assoilzie the defr. But, as this plea of his that I have now sustained was only raised at the conclusion of the proof on the matter of employment, and as he was unsuccessful in that proof, and considering also that he has got the pursuer's services gratis, I shall not allow him any costs."

Act.-Faulds, Glasgow.-Alt.-A. Y. Rose, Airdrie.

ERRATUM. In the report of the case of Burrell's Trustee v. Clark and Rowe for the word "criminal" in the twelfth line from the foot of page 499 read "commercial."

THE

JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE.

THE "THREE RULES OF WASHINGTON" VIEWED IN THEIR RELATION TO INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.1

GENTLEMEN,—In a paper which, as a member of the second commission d'étude appointed by the Institute of International Law in September 1873, I presented to the Conference at Geneva in September last, I stated pretty fully the opinion which, after much consideration, I had formed of the famous "Three Rules of Washington."

As that paper has been printed by the Institute, both in English and in French, I hope to have the pleasure of presenting copies of it to you in the course of the session; and I recur to the subject at present only for the purpose of rendering intelligible what I wish to say to you on the subject of International Arbitration.

When I tell you that I objected to these rules not only in their details but on principle, you will not be surprised to learn that my views met with little acceptance at Geneva; and when I add that my objections applied not only to the rules themselves, but extended to the Foreign Enlistment Acts, both English and American, to which the rules gave partial recognition by treaty, I shall not be surprised if the misapprehensions with reference to the bearing of my views on the subject of arbitration, which I cannot but think influenced the minds of my learned colleagues, should show themselves amongst you. The rules of Washington, and the conceptions of foreign policy on which they rest, have got so bound up in men's minds with all modern schemes and expedients for averting and circumscribing the horrors of war, that he who ventures to raise his voice against them runs the risk of being looked upon as little better than an incendiary who seeks to spread a conflagration which better men are striving to extinguish. The advocate of a doctrine

1 Introductory Lecture delivered by Professor Lorimer to the Class of Public Law in the University of Edinburgh on the 3d November. 2 Y

VOL. XVIII. NO. CCXVI.-DECEMBER 1874.

which exposes him, however unjustly, to such an imputation can look for little sympathy from philanthropists, and I almost doubt whether my friends of the Peace Society, who used to think rather well of me, would now be disposed to admit me into their ranks. And yet, gentlemen, I believe that both the philanthropists and the Peace Society would be wrong in this, as in a good many other matters I could mention; for it is in pursuance of their own objects and in accordance with their own principles, if they understood them rightly, by which I mean, of course, if they understood them as I understand them, that I object both to the rules of Washington and to the Foreign Enlistment Acts. I object to these so-called pacific arrangements, in the name of peace: I object to these so-called progressive arrangements, in the name of progress: and I object to these so-called neutral arrangements, in the name of neutrality. Their primary principle-that of preventing intervention, both public and private, in every form, and leaving the belligerents to tear each other to pieces in isolation, with such weapons as they chance to have at hand, or have had the foresight to provide in anticipation of the war, I regard as unsound from an international, as Lord Palmerston regarded it as unsound from a national point of view, in all circumstances in which the impotence of friendly states does not render it inevitable. In the exceptional circumstances in which it is inevitable, I regard the secondary principle which these enactments call into play, the principle, namely, of burdening neutral states with engagements for the conduct of private persons which they cannot fulfil, and binding them to suspend the action of the economic laws of supply and demand which they cannot control, as equally unsound and inexpedient.

Though we talk of these rules as rules for the protection of neutrality, they are in reality belligerent rules-rules which on every occasion of their recognition have been dictated by belligerents, or rather I ought to say by the stronger belligerent for the time being, in whose favour alone they really operate. If it were possible to act up to them and to work them out to their logical results, though their effect would be to annihilate neutral trade, they might still be defended from a neutral point of view. Peace, it might be said, is better than trade; and these rules at any rate protect the neutral state from the contagion of belligerency. However unfair they may be to the weaker belligerent, whom they cut off from the markets of the world, and consequently from the means of self-defence which still remain to him, they act as an effective quarantine on war. But it is not possible to act up to them, it is not possible to develop them, because it is not possible to establish the absolute isolation which their principles desiderate. The ties of sympathy and interest which bind friends and neighbours, it may be blood-relatives, together, cannot be cut asunder by artificial means. "Love laughs at locksmiths;" and trade will prove stronger than any barriers you can erect against it,

Sympathy and interest rest upon nature, and if in grasping at what appears to be immediate utility you pass neutrality laws which violate natural impulses and tendencies, nature will vindicate her rights by irregular means.

"Naturam expelles furcâ, tamen usque recurret." The more we attempt this impossibility, by magnifying our professions and multiplying our promises, the less we perform it. We simply increase our entanglements and add to the weight of our liabilities for failure. If we had promised less at Washington we should have paid less at Geneva; and if we had promised more-to prevent trading in contraband, for example, as is now being urged upon us, we should have paid more. And yet there seems nothing that neutrals are not ready to promise now-a-days. "Promising is the very air o' the time. To promise is most courtly and fashionable," I fear I may add even with some in whose eyes "performance is a kind of will, or testament, which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it."1

My principle, then, which I oppose to the principle of the "Three Rules," and which I venture to extend to recent municipal legislation on the subject of neutrality, is the principle of freedom of trade, and I maintain that the entanglements of neutrals, and the consequent risks of their being involved in wars, or subjected to the payment of damages to successful belligerents at their termination, increase in a direct ratio to the extent and difficulty of the obligations which they undertake.

Let us begin at the beginning:-The lowest form of obligation which the state desirous of remaining at peace could undertake would be effected by

(a) A proclamation of neutrality by which it announced its own determination to abstain from taking part in its corporate capacity with either belligerent. Now I scent danger even in such a proclamation as this, and I see no necessity for issuing it. No natural obligation, so far as I can see, lies upon a state which desires to abstain from a war in which it is not already involved, to say anything on the subject of that war at all. So long as the state at peace professes nothing, and makes no promises of any kind, to either belligerent, its attitude to both continues to be that of a friend; and a friend is not called upon to proclaim, at the outset, either that he will interfere or that he will not interfere in a quarrel which has arisen between two friends. If he thrusts them from him, and tells them that he can have nothing to do with either of them whilst the war lasts, he tells them in effect that he thinks them both in the wrong, and he insults and offends both of them, more or less. That such is the practical effect of the proceeding is proved by the fact that belligerents are rarely, if ever, on cordial terms with neutrals. They always regard them as less than friends. Moreover, the neutral who partially prejudges a

Timon of Athens, Act v. Scene 1.